


each in his own heart looks

by susiecarter



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Torture, Consent Issues, Demon Deals, Demonic Possession, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exorcisms, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Post-Canon, Rescue, Reunions, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Marcus came for Tomas in New Orleans.
Relationships: Marcus Keane/Tomas Ortega
Comments: 25
Kudos: 65
Collections: Fic In A Box





	each in his own heart looks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CousinShelley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/gifts).



> _... Yet when each of us in his own heart looks,_   
> _he finds the God there far unlike his books._
> 
> —from "[Chorus Sacerdotum](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47683/chorus-sacerdotum)" by Baron Brooke Fulke Greville

Marcus came for Tomas in New Orleans.

Tomas had thought of many ways he might encounter Marcus again. He had speculated, he had hoped—he had dreamed.

But it had been months. Those hopes, those dreams, had begun to feel increasingly farfetched. He had had no idea where Marcus even was, and of course he and Mouse had been zigzagging across the country at an increasingly desperate pace ever since they'd left Washington State behind.

He couldn't regret Mouse—having met her, being given the opportunity to work with her. They were doing well together. They got along, they were effective. She knew many of Marcus's favorite tricks, and of course she had a few of her own, too, which she had graciously taught Tomas as they went. But—

It was no surprise, really. Surely it was no surprise. He'd known Marcus longer. They'd been friends, of a kind and to a degree that had been unprecedented in Tomas's life. They'd saved each other's lives, tended to each other's wounds, seen the best and worse of each other. Of course he missed Marcus. Of course there was a space in his soul, in himself, that cried out helplessly for Marcus, all the louder and more fiercely for the lack of answer.

Even if he might, under other circumstances, have been tempted to interpret his own quiet desperation for Marcus as an urge to commit sin—Marcus had saved him from that, too. Marcus had left him, and he must make his peace with it.

It had been hard, that was all. Which was to say it had been hard to be without Marcus, whose strength and fierce dedication Tomas had so long relied upon—but even if Marcus hadn't left him at all, something was wrong. Tomas felt he would have sensed it in the air, and never mind that he and Mouse had been faced with evidence enough: more and more exorcisms, the numbers steadily mounting as they'd come further south and east, so that it felt as though they had barely time to breathe in between. They'd started splitting up; it was the only way they could complete enough exorcisms to even approach keeping pace with the rising tide.

These days, he was always tired. His head ached almost constantly. There was a relentless itch between his shoulder blades, a sense of being watched by too many eyes. He was, at least, growing skilled—there was a time when he'd never have dared attempt an exorcism alone, but now there was no choice, and his capability, his strength, his faith, had been honed in proportion to the need that he should exercise them. But it was cold comfort, in the face of so much darkness.

He was careful not to use his powers too often. He remembered Marcus's warnings, Marcus's fears. Marcus had killed a man, and had done it in part to prevent Tomas from giving himself over with them; and Tomas couldn't do anything with that terrible sacrifice but try, however belatedly, however uselessly, to honor it.

But sometimes he needed them. He was expecting to, this time—the trail of incidents had led him and Mouse inexorably to New Orleans, and a case that had progressed much too far for comfort before they'd even arrived. Mouse had already received half a dozen other reports all over the city, more than they'd had anywhere else on the way here. She'd left to check them out, see which were legitimate, while he worked the original. But it wasn't going to be like before. Odds were, these days, that _all_ of them were legitimate, and the pressure, the need to hurry, weighed on Tomas the more heavily for his awareness that his gifts might be of some use.

He was expecting to need those gifts, and soon. He was expecting two or three hours' sleep at the most, and then a long hard day's work, and whether he succeeded or failed, the next day would be the same. He was expecting Mouse, quiet and drawn and grave, to tell him there weren't half a dozen legitimate cases but a dozen, and never mind that there were only two of them, they had to do something. God, he was so tired.

But he wasn't expecting Marcus.

He woke, gritty-eyed, at what he belatedly understood had been a sound. A sound, at the door—a knock, he thought dimly, and rubbed a clumsy hand over his face. He was sorely tempted to roll over and pretend he hadn't heard it, go back to sleep. But it had to be absurdly early in the morning, and anyone who'd come to knock on the door of his motel room now was presumably doing it with some urgency.

He'd fallen into bed fully clothed, knowing he'd have to get out of it again within three or four hours. So all he had to do was fumble his way to his feet, yawning, and cross the room. It was dim, but there was a suggestion of approaching dawn outside the windows, just enough to maneuver by; he only stubbed a toe once, on the table standing just beside the door.

He'd locked the door when he'd come in, and set the chain, too. He didn't bother with the peephole—he'd learned by now that they couldn't necessarily be relied upon. Anytime you were using anything less than your own two eyes, looking through a surface or into a mirror, that was an opportunity for something out there to change the image you saw when you did.

He cracked the door, not even far enough to pull the chain taut, and said blearily, "Yes?"

And then he stopped, blinking furiously; and Marcus met his gaze with a sidelong smile and said softly, "Hello, Tomas."

He shut the door, more sharply than he'd meant to—only so he could scrabble with suddenly clumsy fingers to undo the chain, the chain which had seemed like such a helpful precaution and now was infuriatingly preventing him from throwing the door wide and hurling himself at Marcus.

"Marcus," he said, probably too loudly, suddenly realizing how it might have looked from Marcus's side of the door to have it closed in his face. "Marcus, sorry, just—one second—"

The end of the chain finally permitted itself to be worked free of the track. Tomas yanked it loose and swung the door open immediately. Marcus was standing there with something that almost approached diffidence, head downturned, a hand rubbing with absent self-consciousness at the nape of his neck; Tomas reached for him without hesitation, caught him by the shoulders and said, " _Marcus_ ," again, and oh, there was too much in his voice, but he couldn't have prevented it if he'd tried.

He drew Marcus against him, wrapped himself around Marcus without shame, and it felt as though a weight lifted itself from his shoulders, as though Marcus had taken it from him, just that easily. He closed his eyes and let out a long unsteady breath, leaned into Marcus, and Marcus stood there—stood there tense, silent, Tomas abruptly understood, and it was almost enough to make him withdraw and start trying to decide how to apologize, except that a moment later the set of Marcus's body eased to accommodate him, and Marcus's hands came up and settled tentatively against Tomas's back: it was all right after all.

"Tomas," Marcus whispered, gentle, ragged, and all at once his grip tightened; they stood clinging to each other in the doorway for much too long, but Tomas couldn't bring himself to be the first to move away.

And yet he became gradually aware that he must. He was—his eyes were hot and aching, his heart straining in his chest as though it wished to pry its way between his ribs and throw itself into Marcus's hands. He'd thought he was in control of himself, but perhaps that had only been because he'd had no choice but to be, because Marcus had left him and given him no other option but to bear it. But now that was no longer true; now he had Marcus before him again, whole and warm and alive, and after he had spent so much time longing for exactly that, to be given it was overpowering.

He cleared his throat, and made himself withdraw to arm's length, though he couldn't force himself to let go of Marcus entirely. It was good to see Marcus again, to know that Marcus was well, and he was grateful for it. The rest didn't matter. It couldn't matter. And he would take it and put it away where it could do no harm.

Because, he thought, surely he'd need to, with Marcus here with him again. And that was enough.

Except when he smiled at Marcus, Marcus's returning smile took up only half his mouth. Tomas paused, and looked at him more carefully; and perhaps it wasn't just that he'd surprised Marcus with that hug, with the force of his welcome.

Marcus didn't look like a man who'd returned to take up the life he'd left behind, a prodigal son. He didn't look like a man who'd been in New Orleans, and learned an old friend was too, and come to see him.

Tomas remembered thinking that whoever it was who'd come to knock on his door at this hour, they must have done it in urgency. He hadn't known then that it was Marcus, and his startlement and disbelief, his sheer helpless joy, had wiped it from his mind. But he knew abruptly that he'd been right. Marcus's face was grave, his jaw set, his gaze intense.

"Marcus," Tomas said, because he couldn't deny himself the pleasure of saying the name when Marcus was here to hear it. "What is it? What's wrong?"

And Marcus looked at him, a strange and relentless weight in the pressure of his eyes upon Tomas, and said, "Tomas, you have to get out of here."

Tomas blinked. "What?"

"You have to get out of here. You have to leave the city. Now, tonight—"

"But I—why? We only just got here. There's a family, a boy in the Irish Channel. I was going to go in—" Tomas stopped, reached out belatedly to flick a light on instead of relying on the dull fluorescent in the hallway that spilled through the open door, and glanced at the clock on the wall. "In about an hour, actually. I should be getting ready. I can't just leave."

"You _have_ to," Marcus said. He hadn't let go of Tomas either; his hands were clasped tight around Tomas's shoulders, as if he were fighting the temptation to simply drag Tomas out of the room, the motel, the state.

"Marcus, _why_?" Tomas repeated.

Marcus's jaw worked, the muscles jumping. "Because," he said, and then stopped. "Because—because there's danger to you here, Tomas. Please, just trust me. If you've ever in your life trusted me—"

"Of course I trust you," Tomas said blankly, bewildered, and it was a strange sort of blow to see the way Marcus bit his lip, the way his eyes turned wet, as if he hadn't expected to hear it. "But I don't understand. Marcus, I—this child needs my help. I can't just leave him to the demon, even to save myself."

Marcus made a soft hurt sound in the back of his throat, flinching, and—oh, God—because Marcus hadn't left Andy to the demon, exactly, but he'd shot him, and it had been to save not himself, but Tomas.

"No, I didn't mean—"

But it was too late, Tomas could see that already. Marcus had closed himself up, shuttered himself away; he pulled his hands from Tomas's shoulders, crossed his arms over his chest and tucked them into the crooks of his elbows as if to prevent them from reaching out again on their own. He looked away, mouth pressed into a flat line, and he said, low, forced into careful steadiness, "Tomas, please. Tell me you'll go."

God. Tomas felt caught, wrenched—there was nothing he wanted to do more than to agree with Marcus, to give in, to get that look off of Marcus's face. To go back to two minutes ago, Marcus in his arms, the relief and certainty he'd felt when he'd thought Marcus might have come back to stay.

But he couldn't. He _couldn't_.

"I can't," he said. "Marcus, I can't. I'm sorry."

He was afraid Marcus was about to go, without even looking at him again; turn, and walk away, vanish for another year or two or ten, and God, just imagining it made him want to fall to his knees and take it back.

But Marcus only stood there for a second. His head was bowed; he looked so closed-up and self-contained that it didn't seem to matter that Tomas still had a hand on his arm. Tomas didn't feel like he was touching Marcus at all, not really, not in any way that counted.

And then Marcus drew a breath through his nose, and looked up. He met Tomas's eyes, and he wasn't—he didn't look angry, he didn't look frustrated, he didn't look disappointed. There was something soft, now, in his gaze, and the slant of his mouth was very small but very warm.

"Should've known, I suppose," he murmured. "Of course you can't help but be stubborn about it."

And oh, it shouldn't have been so sweet to hear him sound so terribly fond. Tomas swallowed helplessly. "Marcus," he said.

Marcus looked at him, gaze flicking back and forth over Tomas's face as though he couldn't help but try to drink the whole thing in at once, every bit of it. "Never mind," he said softly, shaking his head. "Don't listen to me. It's—it's one of the things I've always loved best in you, Tomas, that you refuse to let go of anyone you think you could save."

That, too, should have been good to hear. That should have made Tomas flush to his ears in gratitude, that even if Marcus had left him, even if Marcus didn't feel this endless aching yearning, Marcus loved him anyway.

But instead it jarred him to his bones. There was a note in it that fell too sharp upon his ear, discordant, ominous, a minor key, and he felt instantly breathless with foreboding. "Marcus," he said again.

"No, it's all right," Marcus said, in a terrible calm way Tomas didn't like at all. "It's all right. You should be getting ready, don't let me keep you. I shouldn't've—shouldn't've come at this hour, don't know what I was thinking. You go on."

"You'll come back later," Tomas said, trying not to let it sound like a question, refusing to relinquish his grasp on Marcus's arm.

And Marcus reached up and covered Tomas's hand with his own, smiled a little and said, "Sure. Glad I found you, Tomas. It's—good to see you," and it should have sounded like the platitude it so often was, but his voice broke in the middle of it, hoarse and full of feeling, as if he'd felt his own absence as powerfully as Tomas had.

"Of course. You as well," was all Tomas could manage, his throat half-closed; it didn't seem like anywhere near enough, but it made something in Marcus's face go soft and even shy.

Marcus stood there a moment longer, only looking at Tomas. And then he bit his mouth, freed his hands where he'd trapped them in his elbows and reached up to touch Tomas's face—to draw Tomas's head down, and press a firm steady kiss to his brow.

"Goodbye, Tomas," he said, against Tomas's temple. And then he let go, and drew his arm out from beneath Tomas's hand, and left.

It was all right, Tomas thought, listening to his footsteps in the hallway. It was all right. He was going to come back later, he'd agreed that he would; they'd sit down and talk. He could explain whatever it was he'd been trying to say, what the danger was that he thought Tomas needed to avoid. They would sort it out, together.

But he couldn't quite banish a feeling in his gut that said it had been a mistake to leave the door open, to make it so easy for Marcus to leave; that he should have pulled Marcus in and closed it, locked it, and never let go of him again.

He'd told Marcus the truth. There was a family, a boy, in the Irish Channel; they'd only spoken over the phone, but Tomas had been able to hear the screaming, a dark strange voice laughing, and there was no doubt in his mind that they needed an exorcist, however much he hoped he might be wrong.

He prepared what he had, and then he left. He'd learned that he worked best in the dim hours of early morning—demons preferred the hours of darkness, shadow, which meant it was easier to engage with them from sundown to sunrise, easier to goad them into displays of their power that would give him an angle from which to pry them free. And yet the slow approach of the sun, the knowledge that dawn inexorably drew nearer, made Tomas himself feel stronger. Less alone.

The boy was entangled deeply already, he found. But not so far that Tomas couldn't get him back. The family gave Tomas his name—Derek—and a space in which to work, clean water, everything he asked them for, and agreed not to come in unless Tomas himself emerged from the room to fetch them, no matter who called for them or what was said.

And then he went in, and closed the door behind him, and began.

He had done so many exorcisms now, it was strange to remember how all this had started: how he'd found himself convinced, but still so unsure; how closely he'd hung on every word out of Marcus's mouth at first, half fascinated and half still helplessly disbelieving. It was as though seeing Marcus again, and so unexpectedly, had brought it all back, nearer than it had been in months. How strange and startling, how terrifying, it had all seemed; how intrigued he'd been by everything Marcus had known to try, the things Marcus had written in his Bible, the nuns' litany.

He'd learned, all those months together in the pickup truck, that exorcisms weren't always like that. They weren't always so hard. Not many people had Angela Rance's history, had had that darkness clinging within them for so long, or a demon with such a relentlessly personal focus on them.

And since Washington, he and Mouse had had no choice but to try new things, to do whatever they could to become better, quicker. There were so many people who needed them, and they couldn't afford to spend weeks on a single case unless there was no other choice.

He was able to assess Derek's condition at a glance, and to determine that they were probably beyond the point where it was worth attempting some of the basic litanies; those yielded results, but only if you started early enough, only if the demon hadn't found itself too much purchase within the soul. He did what he could for Derek, cleaned the sores that had developed on the face and hands and tried to get at least a little water through the cracking lips. And then he started his work.

After an hour or so, the sky had lightened further, and he had a much better idea what he was dealing with. He had almost managed to force the demon to surrender its name, but then it had done its level best to force Derek to choke on his own tongue. They'd battled back and forth for a time after that, until Tomas had forced it to expend enough effort that it had chosen to withdraw—to rebuild its strength, of course, but still. That gave him a chance to speak to Derek directly, to reassure him that help had come and he was not alone, to give him water he could drink on his own instead of dribbling it into his mouth and hoping he'd swallow.

It was a balm. Tomas had always found it so. To see and speak to the person he was trying to exorcise—to have the reminder of why he was here, who he meant to save—had only ever made him stronger in his faith and in his will, and he was grateful for it.

And of course, because his thoughts couldn't turn in any other direction today, he found himself wondering whether it was that way for Marcus. Sometimes, he recalled, Marcus had seemed almost frustrated by these sorts of breaks, as though he'd wanted to simply power through and force the demon out with the sheer intensity of his impatience.

God. What had he been doing, all this time? Had _he_ been undertaking exorcisms, too, always careful to keep his distance from any case Tomas and Mouse had taken? It should have been a balm, to think Marcus had been out there with them, even if they hadn't known it. But instead he found he didn't like it at all. His gut said Marcus wasn't meant to work alone, was better off with someone near him to help him stay out of his own head; but perhaps that was only selfishness, because of course Tomas's gut also insisted that that someone should be Tomas himself—

And then he realized he had missed the moment when the demon had come forward again: because Derek was lying there with his cracked, sore lips twisted into a smile, saying in a voice that wasn't his own, "So you're the little cub, then. All alone now—so _sad_."

Tomas almost laughed. Of all the days it might have chosen to attempt to use Marcus against him, it had picked today—when for once, at last, he felt anything but alone, knowing Marcus was in the same city, had been in the same _room_ with him, and would be again if Tomas had anything to do with it.

He shook his head, reached down and set his hand on Derek's forehead and said, with all the compassion he had in him, "Ashes on the earth, you are relieved."

"Or, well, not yet, at least," the demon said, and smiled wider, and when it did there were too many teeth, teeth that shouldn't have been in Derek's mouth. "Soon. Soon, soon. They have him, you know. It won't be long now."

Tomas frowned—and then caught himself, shook his head and wet his lips. No. It was—they lied. They always lied. They looked for cracks, and when they found one, they pressed in upon it with all they had, the better to break you open. It didn't mean anything.

Just because Marcus had gone so odd and calm at the end, before he'd left—just because he'd been talking about a danger so great he wanted Tomas to leave the city at three o'clock in the morning—just because he'd pressed his mouth to Tomas's brow and said, _Goodbye_ , like that—

"You are relieved," Tomas repeated, but the words didn't sound right in his ears, thin, hollow. "I pray for you, outcast—"

"And I for you," the demon murmured, almost sweetly. "What will you do? What will you do, without that mangy old lion at your back? He's screaming for them—oh, his pain is _delicious_. But soon there won't be enough left of him for that."

"No," Tomas said, which was a mistake. He knew it was a mistake. They'd say anything, everything, and just wait to see what it took to make you react, where the weak spots were. If you didn't engage, if you kept your focus, there was nothing they could do to you—

"Oh, yes," the demon said. "Not much to him, is there? A bag of flesh and blood and bones. The blood they'll save. The flesh is theirs already, and they will flay it from him a piece at a time, crack the bones beneath and suck out the marrow." It shivered, wriggled Derek's straining body in sheer delight.

"What are you talking about?" Tomas demanded, and told himself it was just a way to draw it out, to keep it talking, to get the demon to give him something he could use; in a sense, after all, that was almost the truth.

But not quite.

The demon laughed. Tomas snarled, gripped Derek's face in his hand and with the other shook out a spray of holy water from the bottle he'd brought, and the demon thrashed, screaming, yelping, as the drops burned into the flesh it was inhabiting, reacting to the inherent corruption of its presence.

"There's nothing you can do for him now," it shrieked. "They have him, and they'll take him apart piece by piece—"

"Tell me _who_ ," Tomas ground out, and then—he could _feel_ it, under his hand on Derek's face. He could feel the shape of the demon, the depthless lightless seeping of its presence, the way that smothering shadow had laced itself through Derek's body, crammed itself into every little nook and cranny and taken hold of him.

He tried not to use his powers too often. He did. But here they were, pressing themselves into his hands, just the tools he needed. The demon wouldn't tell him anything useful. It only wanted to taunt him, hurt him, make him angry. But he could—he could push in there and _take_ the answer out; he hadn't known he could, but he felt now, in this instant, instinctively, that it was true.

He kept his hand on Derek's face, slid the other beneath the nape of Derek's neck, and locked eyes with it. He could still feel it, still had that sense for it, in a way that was beyond the physical, beyond ordinary reckoning. And with whatever part of himself that was touching it, with whatever part of himself that perception came from, he _pressed_.

It didn't work the first time. He could feel that he was sliding off to one side, that he hadn't directed that pressure with the right amount of force, nor at the right angle. He drew back, gathered himself, tried again.

There. _There_. The barest feeling of give, a faint softness like a fruit only just beginning to bruise.

He pushed harder. The demon squirmed, writhed; but it was already filling up every corner of Derek it had been able to find, and there was nowhere for it to go. It wailed, made itself taut, tried to brace its essence to withstand him.

But it couldn't. He almost faltered at the realization as it dawned on him, but it was true. Like this, with his power blazing and eager and unused, all his concentration bent upon this single task—it couldn't stop him.

And then, in a burst like cracking through a layer of ice, he was through.

It _was_ like ice, or at least that was how it felt to him. There were edges, shards, cold and sharp, scraping and clawing at him as he pressed deeper. And the feeling of doing it was—where the fruit had barely been bruising, before, now there was a bowl of it and it was rotten, squirming with maggots and buzzing with flies, and he was pushing his whole hand into the dead mush of it, an inch at a time.

He tried not to flinch. He had to keep going. But God, it was revolting, to submerge so much of himself within the demon; it was viscous, _wrong_ , skin-crawling.

And then he found something.

This demon wasn't just inside Derek. It extended further than that. There was something—there was something binding it, some great leaden chain that held it. It had been _sent_ here, Tomas understood dimly. It had been _put_ into Derek Isler.

Like this, unbound from himself, free to move in this space at the slightest impulse, it was the work of an instant to follow the chain, to slide along the length of it: like running a hand down it, links shifting beneath his mind's fingertips. Until, all at once, he came to the end of it, and was somewhere else.

He was—he was looking out from behind other eyes. Eyes with too many pupils. Whoever this was, they weren't like Derek; the demon in them wasn't squeezing itself into the cracks of them. They were barely there at all, a light as good as snuffed out. And in the space that light should have filled, left empty, the demon was curled up whole and comfortable, lord and master.

Integrated.

The eyes Tomas was behind roved a room, vast and dark, with which they were familiar. Other faces, a ring of them, and these also familiar, and the eyes were satisfied with what they saw. They were safe here, among their fellows. Tomas saw starched collars, fine heavy robes. Deacons, and even priests, and yet the eyes didn't move with alarm; all integrated. Oh, God—

And then whoever this was turned, turned and looked, and the thing they turned and looked at was Marcus.

Demons lied. But the demon in Derek Isler hadn't been lying about this.

Marcus had been stripped, tied—tied to a _cross_ , though at least he hadn't been nailed to it. Not yet. It wasn't a true cross, but even-armed, Tomas understood; that was why they could all look at it, touch it.

And he'd been beaten. Beaten, whipped bloody. His face was—Tomas had only known it was him because he knew every inch of that face, had searched it over and over when it was in front of him and then built and rebuilt it in his mind's eye after Marcus left him. He'd been lashed there, too, a slice across his forehead sheeting blood, a split across the bridge of his nose and one of his cheekbones.

They hadn't put out his eyes. They hadn't cut out his tongue. It could have been worse. But that wasn't the comfort it should have been, because there was no doubt in Tomas's mind that they were working up to it. They were drawing it out, that was all, savoring it. Marcus Keane, the Father Marcus they had once so feared—they had him now, and they _would_ flay him, take him apart, peel him open and cut him into pieces.

And the blood—they were saving it after all. There was a great bowl laid at Marcus's feet, and the ones who weren't busy at the whips, taking turns, were clapping, exultant, as blood dripped from Marcus's suspended toes and spattered into the shallow pool of it already gathered there.

It took only an instant for all this to be blazoned indelibly upon Tomas's mind. He flinched from it, shocked, sick and horrified, and that was all it took for him to lose his grasp on the chain that had brought him here; he slid back along its length, and was returned abruptly to the Islers' apartment: to himself, bent close over Derek Isler, Derek's head in his hands, and he was gasping for breath, hands shaking.

Because he understood, now.

This was the danger. It had to be. This group, whatever it was—these priests, integrated. By the demonic power that dwelt within them, combined, they had sent this demon, had put it into Derek. The other half-dozen cases Mouse had been checking, Tomas felt suddenly sure, were the same. A trap.

A trap for an exorcist.

He and Mouse had followed a trail here, a trail of cases of increasing intensity and urgency. And they had been intended to. That had been the plan all along. The integrated cult had needed an exorcist—or perhaps simply the blood of an exorcist, but of course they couldn't have obtained that willingly in a hundred years.

And then Marcus had come here. Marcus had followed that same trail, the trail of completed exorcisms Mouse and Tomas had left behind them. Marcus had come here, and Marcus had tried to send Tomas away.

Tomas wondered bleakly whether it had made any difference. Would Marcus have done it anyway, once Tomas had gone, but simply in less urgency, reassured that Tomas was out of their reach? Or was it—was it because of him, his damned stubbornness, the righteous insistence that Marcus had claimed to love, that Marcus had handed himself over?

Because he had. He must have. He'd known there was a danger here; they wouldn't have been able to trick him or catch him, not when he'd somehow been forewarned.

He'd done it on purpose. He'd given himself to them, to keep Tomas—and Mouse—from being taken instead.

"Oh, _God_ ," Tomas heard himself say, hoarse and wavering. "Oh, God, no."

The demon was gasping, too, shivering in Derek's body, eyes wild. Probably, Tomas thought dimly, no one had ever done anything like that to it before; it was used to doing that to humans, not the other way around.

And—and then there were the chains. The chains that held it here, inside Derek. This case could easily have eaten up weeks, Tomas struggling and unaware, with no idea what was making this particular demon so difficult to exorcise.

Could he break them? He had to try. He _had_ to try.

God, he had to find Marcus, and he had to do it before they killed him—

He looked at the demon in Derek. And oh, this was a terrible idea. This was the worst idea Tomas had ever had.

But that heavy black chain he'd felt was holding the demon. And surely the demon wanted to be rid of it. Surely it didn't care to be at the beck and call of its smugly integrated fellows. It must have resented being forced into this boy's body, being used as bait for the demons' great enemy.

And _if_ Tomas succeeded in forcing it from Derek, _if_ he did it fast enough that Marcus was still alive by the time he was done, _if_ he managed to learn where Marcus was being held—what could he do about it? Him alone, against so many. And integrated fully, all the demons' terrible powers to hand instead of limited only to what they could wrench out through a shell they hadn't fully possessed—

No. He couldn't do it. He wouldn't survive it.

He needed help.

"Demon," he said.

The demon met his eyes, Derek's fists clenched, Derek's jaw tight. It didn't speak; at least it wasn't calling him "little cub" anymore.

"Demon," Tomas repeated, "I want to make a deal with you."

The terms went like this:

Tomas would break what held the demon, whatever working it was that forced it into the service of its fellows. Tomas would open himself to it—Tomas would let it in. Because he had agreed, because he had consented, it would be as though integrated; better, even, because his soul was whole, because it had not sawed and scratched and chipped away at him for months, years.

And he would not cast it from him, nor would he allow anyone else to do so. It could do as it would with him. It would know him as he knew himself: his sins, his flaws, his failings. It would have every opportunity to tempt him, to try to win his soul. And he would make it a much more satisfying prize than little Derek Isler.

But—only for the length of the term to which Tomas agreed. A week, and no more.

In return, it would help him. He didn't know where the integrated cult was, who they were or how they conducted themselves; the demon did. It would go there, and it would stop them, and it would rescue Marcus. And it wouldn't hurt him. It could do whatever it liked with Tomas, with his body: it could break his ribs, his legs, his fingers and his toes; it could bite through his tongue, chew off his arms at the elbows. But it was not to lay a finger on Marcus.

And when the week was through, if it hadn't won, it would leave him, and be cast down into Hell again.

It had to be convinced, cajoled. A week! A week was a long, long time. It would have every opportunity it could possibly have asked for, in a week. It would lose nothing by its agreement: he had been about to exorcise it anyway, after all. This way, it gained time, a chance to break Tomas himself, and revenge upon the fellow demons who had made such sport of it, dangling it like this in front of an exorcist.

That was what convinced it, in the end. It licked its lips and smiled, no doubt imagining all the torments it might gleefully visit upon its own kind, and agreed.

And as Tomas gave his word likewise, for a moment he was stricken with cold uncertain doubt. He had—he had no way to be sure it would do as it had sworn.

But it was clearly tempted by the prospect of destroying the integrated cult; that much, at least, he could probably depend on. And if it did that much, then Marcus would be saved. Marcus would be saved, and he and Mouse would never give up on Tomas. He and Mouse would never leave Tomas like this. One way or another, they would do something about it.

He told himself this, and spoke. And in the instant his consent was given, a feeling passed over him, a force in the very air itself that made the nape of his neck prickle, made his ears pop.

So perhaps something besides his own will would govern the enforcement of this deal after all.

And then he drew a deep breath, and closed his eyes, and let the demon in.

* * *

Mmm.

Oh, this was _so_ much better. This was wonderful. Much more comfortable, to have the run of the place—not squeezed into a corner, not grappling and scraping for every measly inch. And that fucking binding, gone at last. That had been older than Tomas had even understood; the others had taken advantage of it, yes, but they weren't responsible for it. Another of Tomas's kind had forged it, and it would always have taken an exorcist to remove it. Though of course "exorcist" wasn't what they'd called themselves, in those days.

And now it was gone! A weight off, in every sense of the word. And without it—yes, all the strength, all the power, everything had come back, as good as new. Marvelous.

This was going to be so much _fun_.

Derek Isler came awake, sore, in pain, disoriented. Tomas Ortega smiled down at him comfortingly, and told him all was well—opened the door and let his worried family come in, crying, embracing him, giving thanks to what they didn't understand with phrases that stung and pinched.

Tomas walked out before anyone noticed the way he was grimacing at every holy word. He left the apartment building where the Islers lived. And he walked down the street, whistling a little.

It wasn't actually all that far, though of course there were limitations to this body. There was no point in exceeding them right now. That would give the game away.

But soon enough they came to a building. Tomas walked into it. He was distantly surprised that it could be done—oh, but he shouldn't have been! He'd seen what was going on underneath it, after all. He knew perfectly well that there was no possible way this was sacred ground, not anymore. Honestly.

There was a door, in the back, a door most people weren't supposed to go through. Tomas went through it. There were stairs, and Tomas took them, down into the belly of the beast.

There was a lookout, because of course there was. Not just anybody got to walk into these kinds of meetings.

But Tomas had made an agreement. Tomas was, for all intents and purposes, integrated. And when someone made him stand there and look them in the eye, Tomas had plenty of pupils.

Not too many. That was the wrong way to say it. That made it sound like a bad thing.

Tomas hadn't understood what a good deal it was he'd made. Tomas's problem was that he didn't understand his own value. He didn't understand what he was, and he didn't understand what he could do.

Father Marcus did. That was why he'd done what he'd done. If you knew about Tomas, then suddenly the old lion's stupid self-important gesture made some kind of sense.

They could do plenty with Marcus Keane. But they could have done even more with Tomas.

And now Tomas had come for them, and Tomas had help.

With any old body, it would've been possible to walk in here like this. It would've been possible to flip a handful of them into walls, with enough intent behind the push; that could be done even without integration, though it was a lot more tiring. It would also have been possible to survive the first attempt to push back, and even to fight a couple more of them to a draw.

But with Tomas?

With Tomas, it was _easy_.

Tomas could reach inside them, could grab what held them where they were and pop it like a soap bubble. With each demon he shoved screaming out into empty nothingness, the bodies fell over and lay there unseeing, or stumbled to their knees and couldn't rise—they'd been integrated, and without the demon there wasn't enough left in there, nobody driving.

Tomas could break them. Tomas could tighten the screws until they wailed before he forced them out. That was a surprise. Tomas hadn't entirely expected to want to do that. But, as it turned out, Tomas wanted a lot of wonderfully vicious things—

Oh, of course. Because Marcus Keane was still strung up over there. That was why. It had been long enough that they had nailed down one hand, but not the other. He was still conscious, the eyelid of his remaining good eye fluttering helplessly, breaths heaving their way raggedly from his chest—which was sliced across with long bloody lines, marks where fingers had dug playfully into the wounds, though nobody had bothered to cut through into his actual guts just yet. Shame.

Tomas, it turned out, was able to not just forcibly expel other demons from the bodies they were riding around in. He could actually hold them there with his mind once he had, and shred them to pieces.

Well. That was slightly concerning.

He only did that to one of them, though. The last one, once he'd torn through all the rest and left those sad mortal shells doddering and empty behind them: the one that was still holding the whip.

The demon sobbed and screamed and thrashed, as it came apart in Tomas's unmerciful grip, and then it was—it was just gone, nothing left, empty air echoing where it had been.

But the body was still there. Didn't that bother Tomas? It should. After all, that body had been integrated, hadn't it? That body, at some crucial moment, had chosen to give in: to stop fighting, to hand itself over, to let that demon use it to do whatever it wanted. To do things like whip Marcus Keane. Wasn't that horrible? How could it have done that? How could that body's pathetic little owner have done that? Shouldn't it pay? Shouldn't it be punished for—

"Tomas—"

No, no, come on. Come on, he was about to do it, he was so close. He had his hands around its throat, and of course the body was the next best thing to braindead, it wasn't like it could fight back. All Tomas had to do was squeeze, and no demon would ever be able to get in there again! Wasn't that what he wanted? Wasn't that a _good_ thing, really, if you thought about it?

"Tomas, no. _No_. Don't. Please, don't."

"Shut up, old lion," spat something that was mostly Tomas; and then Tomas gasped and shuddered all over, tore his hands away from the throat of the archdeacon—of what was left of the archdeacon—and stumbled numbly toward the cross where Marcus was bound and nailed.

He shoved the bowl away, kicked it so it flipped over, so Marcus's pooled blood was spilled where it could soak into the stone, where it would seep away and dry up and could never be used for anything. He pulled the thick square nail out of Marcus's hand with his fingers. He didn't need to untie the ropes: he touched them and they started burning, hot and fast, and then he clutched Marcus against him and pulled, and they broke, and Marcus was free.

He was easy to carry. He didn't feel like he weighed anything, though some part of Tomas knew perfectly well that he did, and that under ordinary circumstances Tomas couldn't possibly have lifted him unaided and moved him that far.

And then Tomas laid him down on the floor, and said, "Oh, God, _Marcus_ ," and wept.

* * *

Tomas was here.

That didn't make any sense. Did it?

Marcus couldn't be sure. He didn't know. He didn't understand anything.

He'd gone far away inside himself, because he'd known he was going to need to. He'd known he wasn't going to want to be around for anything that was going to happen to him, once he was brought here.

He'd been hurt. That part, he knew. He'd been hurt over and over, and he wasn't dead yet. Those had been the two facts his existence had been made of.

And then—

And then, Tomas had come in.

That was the part where things had stopped making sense. Tomas couldn't be here. Marcus had made sure Tomas wouldn't be here; that had been the whole point. And yet he'd come in anyway, come in and—and scythed through the integrated like wheat, furious, glorious and terrible, black-eyed. He'd hewn them before him and left dazed half-alive bodies in his wake.

Something different had happened to the last one, though Marcus couldn't've said quite what if his life had depended on it. And then Tomas had closed his hands around the man's throat and _squeezed_ , had strangled him till he was red and silent, helpless—

Marcus had said something. He didn't know exactly what. He hadn't even been sure whether he'd been talking to Tomas, as such, or simply protesting the ridiculous unreality of the whole thing. After all—

After all, it was _Marcus_ who killed people. Not Tomas.

And then Tomas had stopped, and borne Marcus away; and now he was crying, crying and touching Marcus all over, which also probably wasn't real, now that Marcus thought about it.

Specifically, he was touching Marcus's face, the—the place where one of his eyes had once been. And his hand. His hand, the one they'd put the nail through, the one with the horrid bloody hole just between the middle two bones—

Marcus jerked, gasping, thrashing. Something was passing over him, through him, a little like the way you felt watching the sun rise and streak the whole sky pink after a long stormy night you'd spent alone; a little like the way you felt when you'd been stranded somewhere and you'd had to walk miles and miles to get home, but then you were and you could take your shoes off and there was iced tea in the fridge and bandaids for all your blisters.

And then when he looked again, blinking hard, blurry-eyed—blurry-eyed, _both_ his blurry eyes, he had two eyes again and he didn't know how that could be true—there was still blood. But there was no hole.

He swallowed convulsively, throat dry and aching, and twitched his hand; that was all he could do at first, nerves rebelling, muscles still certain anything more would make him scream. But it didn't hurt. He braced himself, and made it _move_ , flexed it one way and then the other.

There was no hole. There was a mark, a scar. The skin a little different: pinker, newer. But there was no hole.

Tomas was still crying. "I'm sorry," he was saying.

He moved his hand from Marcus's own to Marcus's chest. The three deepest lash-marks, long and bloody, almost to the bone, were healed beneath it. Marcus's breath stuttered out of him helplessly. And Tomas's other hand, still at his face, moved, too: Tomas ran trembling fingers over the line one of them had carved into Marcus's forehead with a hunting knife, and this time Marcus almost understood what was happening, was almost able to keep up—he could _feel_ it close, the itch and stretch of his skin, the pain leaching away under Tomas's touch.

How—How—

"Tomas," Marcus said dazedly, his voice hoarse and thin and cracking, and Tomas squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, swayed down over Marcus and pressed their foreheads together, though Marcus's was still wet and sticky with blood.

"I had to," Tomas whispered, against Marcus's jaw. "Marcus—I had to."

And Marcus lay there and felt his gut go cold, even before Tomas sat back again and looked at him, and one of his wide wet eyes turned sickeningly in its socket so Marcus could see the third pupil in it.

"No. _No_."

"I had to," and oh, God, that damned stubbornness. He'd found out. Somehow he'd found out.

And of course Tomas, beautiful righteous reckless Tomas, wouldn't have turned his back on Marcus as long as he thought for even a moment he could still save him.

Marcus let his eyes fall shut, felt hot tears slide from them and didn't even try to wipe them away. "Oh, Tomas," he whispered, wretched. "What have you done?"

He could almost have laughed for the excruciating irony of it, except he was already crying. This was exactly what he'd meant to prevent, exactly the thing he'd come to New Orleans to stop at any cost—knowing that he must, filled with divine purpose, because Tomas's name had been spoken to him and he'd been shown what was coming. He'd hoped, dimly, that Tomas might be convinced to listen to him, that he could at least guarantee himself some kind of safe distance; that Tomas might leave New Orleans and not come back, and never know what had happened to Marcus.

These integrated—Electus, they had called themselves, or perhaps that was a title they had applied to each other; Marcus hadn't been listening with his full attention—had determined that they must have an exorcist. And Marcus had ensured that they got one. One that wasn't Tomas. Because if they found Tomas, if they pried him open and got their hooks into him, oh, that was the beginning of the end. Marcus had _seen_ it. That couldn't be how it went. He would have given anything to ensure it; himself was the least of the prices he'd willingly have paid.

Except somehow Tomas had learned of it. Tomas had learned of it, and had done the thing to _himself_. Had handed himself over, deliberate, eyes open, so that he might come and save Marcus in turn.

And for the demons, no doubt, it would have been about Tomas and the things he could do, the rare and dangerous gifts he'd been given. But there was no denying that for Marcus, it went deeper. Of course he didn't want Tomas's abilities, Tomas's strength and faith and knowledge, used to commit works of evil. But it was worse still simply because it was _Tomas_ —Tomas and his kindness, his gentleness, his steady sweet compassion; the bravery with which he'd undertaken to defy the Church itself to help a single family among his flock, and the tender vulnerability with which he'd expressed his doubts, his uncertainties, to Marcus. That a demon, now, should be seated among all that, should pass its blackened stinking hands over all that made Tomas himself—

It was horrifying. It was infuriating. Marcus could barely stand to think of it. And if this destroyed Tomas, Marcus would never forgive himself.

Not that he'd ever been particularly good at that in any case.

But—

Marcus blinked.

Tomas was still himself. Tomas was still himself, at least a little. Wasn't he? Wasn't that what it meant, that he had stopped strangling whatever was left of the archdeacon, when Marcus had pleaded with him to? Wasn't that what it meant, that he was kneeling here weeping over Marcus, using—using the _demon's_ powers to heal Marcus, because Tomas had a gift but that had never been part of it?

He wasn't integrated. Not yet. Marcus didn't know what _had_ happened, but that evidently wasn't it.

"Tomas," he said, breathless, testing. And Tomas looked at him, and his eyes were still wrong, but—Marcus would have sworn on anything, on a stack of Bibles, on his own life, on _Tomas's_ life, that it was at least partly Tomas in there, despite everything.

He only felt more certain of it when, a moment later, something changed.

Tomas's eyes were still wet. His hands still shook where they were spread over Marcus's half-healed chest. But his mouth began to move, it was—he was smiling, only a little and then wider, a bit at a time, slow and pleased.

"Every unclean spirit," Marcus began unsteadily, "every Satanic power," but God, he was too weak, he had to stop and gasp, and the thing in Tomas laughed and shook its head at him.

"Oh, enough of that," it said, warm and chiding, as though he were an errant child. "It won't work. We have a deal, you see. He gave his word."

God. Was that better, or worse? Marcus had no idea. Surely Tomas wouldn't have been foolish enough not to place some sort of limit on it, no matter how desperate he'd been. And the demon—the demon must have wanted something, must have gotten something out of it, too, or it would never have agreed.

"Are you listening?" it said, and moved Tomas's hand on his face, gripped him by the chin, the jaw. "You can't touch me. He's mine. I'll break him, and win his soul, and when I'm done perhaps I'll keep this body long enough to—"

Marcus was ready to wait it out; Tomas was _definitely_ still in there, and sooner or later he would come forward again. But it stopped short, and shuddered all over, and it was Tomas again already. He could tell even before Tomas blinked, swallowing, and eased the bruising grip the demon had had on Marcus's chin.

"I," he said haltingly, and then, "Marcus," and Marcus managed somehow to smile at him.

"All right, come on," he made himself say. "Help me up."

He could stand, and after a moment he could even do it unaided. They'd torn his clothes off, cut them away, but some of them had cast off their priests' robes; he muttered half a prayer, half an apology, and let Tomas put one on him. Together they reached the entryway, and from there the base of the stairs that led up, and the more Marcus moved, the more his confused body understood that he really wasn't very badly hurt anymore, and the better it cooperated with him.

And just as they reached the top of the stairs, the door ahead of them swung open, and it was Mouse.

She stared at them—Marcus more than Tomas, which was fair enough considering what an absolute mess he must look, blood drying all over him but barely any wounds to show where it had come from, and vestments she'd have known weren't his even if they hadn't been several sizes too large.

"Come on," she said, low, practical as ever, and when they were through the door she reached out and fitted herself under Marcus's arm, opposite where Tomas had already done the same.

They were through the church in a moment, but they went out the back, not the front.

"Something happened," Mouse explained, keeping her voice soft, as they ducked down a side street. "I still don't know what to call it. The earth moved, or the sky did. There was a—sound. I could tell where it was coming from. But I didn't know it was you. What were you _doing_ down there?"

Marcus looked at Tomas, and thought of the thing Tomas had done to the last one, the archdeacon. Not the strangling; the thing that had come before that, the thing Marcus hadn't been able to describe even to himself. At that moment, dazed and agonised, with one eye put out and a nail through his hand, the earth and the sky could both have moved in separate directions, with a great clap of thunder as they did it; he wouldn't have known for sure.

"I'll—tell you later," he said to Mouse, who gave him a steady sideways look but evidently understood this wasn't really the moment to get into it.

She had the truck—that was how she'd gotten here as fast as she had. She'd already been on her way back to the motel for Tomas; and the motel was past the church. Lucky them.

It was only once they were inside, and the doors closed and locked, that he reluctantly said, "We're going to need to see to Tomas."

She'd gotten into the driver's seat; she turned and looked at him, beside her, and Tomas squeezed in against the passenger door. And Tomas swallowed, and admitted quietly, "He's right."

She didn't ask any more questions. She got out the handcuffs, and Marcus got them hooked through the grab handle on Tomas's side and then closed Tomas's wrists into them.

Tomas didn't fight him; but by the time he'd clicked the second shut, Tomas's teeth were gritted, the muscles in his jaw standing out. The demon clearly would've preferred that he do something about it, but for the moment he had a hold on himself.

"Let me know if your arms start to hurt," Marcus said to him, as Mouse started up the truck with a rumble.

"Right," Tomas said, clipped, in a way that Marcus knew meant he wasn't going to say a word even if he dislocated both shoulders.

"Tomas—"

"And what about you?" Mouse said. "That blood yours?"

"Yeah," Marcus admitted. "But I'm fine."

It was even mostly true, after all the work Tomas had already done. And lucky these vestments were black: he could wipe the worst of it off his face and onto them and it hardly showed.

"Where to?"

Marcus thought about it for a second. "Baton Rouge," he suggested.

There was an old safehouse outside the city; he'd used it before, and he was pretty sure she had, too, though it had been a while.

She nodded at him. And that nod didn't just mean _yes_ —that was an _okay, that's all I needed, go ahead and get your shit straight_ nod, a _say what you have to say and explain to me later_ nod, coming from Mouse.

Tomas had closed his hands around the chain of the handcuffs, and he wasn't looking out the window but straight ahead, into the middle distance, seeing nothing.

"Tomas," Marcus said.

"You can't exorcise me," Tomas said, and for an instant Marcus thought it was the demon again; but Tomas bit his lip and looked over, and no, it was still Tomas after all. "It won't work. I made a deal with it, and that was one of the terms."

"Yeah, I think it said something about that," Marcus said, and watched Tomas's expression flicker; he couldn't remember, then. He couldn't remember what the demon had said, what it had done, and that had to scare the hell out of him. "How long did you give it, then?"

"A week," Tomas said quietly, and swallowed hard, throat working.

A week. Well, that wasn't good, Marcus thought grimly, but it could have been worse. A week was bad—but survivable. The safehouse in Baton Rouge was probably up to a week, and at least there they could keep Tomas away from anyone else, anyone who didn't know what was wrong with him, anyone he could really hurt.

"All right," Marcus said aloud, and reached out to grip Tomas's shoulder. "A week's not so bad. Hardly any time at all, really."

Tomas gave him a sharp, wretched look.

"We'll make it," Marcus said. "Tomas—trust me."

Not that it had worked out so well for either of them the first time he'd tried that one on Tomas today; Tomas looked briefly sick, like he was remembering it too, and then whispered, "I do, Marcus. I do trust you."

And Marcus moved his hand from Tomas's shoulder to his face, and rubbed his thumb along Tomas's cheekbone, and said it again: "We'll make it, Tomas. We aren't going to let it win. You saved me, all right? You saved me, and now you're going to let me save you. It'll be all right."

He couldn't be sure it was true. He couldn't be sure of anything. But Tomas looked at him then like he believed it, and that was what mattered. Tomas was here, and alive, and he wasn't alone; he'd done what it took for Marcus, and Marcus couldn't do less than the same for him.

The safehouse outside Baton Rouge looked the same way it had the last time Marcus had seen it. Needed a new coat of paint, but then it always had; the loose shutter, the one that hung crooked, was maybe a fraction closer to falling off entirely.

He and Mouse got out of the truck. Tomas hadn't moved or said a word for the whole drive, hour and a half, clinging grimly to the handcuff chain and pressing himself up against the passenger door as if he were worried the demon might sidle its way from him to Marcus at any moment.

Marcus took two steps toward the front walk, and then stopped. The way he remembered it, the keys were tucked under the front porch; but Mouse was going past him toward what had once been half a garden, now neglected and wildly overgrown.

He followed. She went to a rock and took one edge, tipped it up, and he was about to make a joke about how that had to be at least as predictable as stowing the keys under the porch when he realised there wasn't just dirt under there: the rock, wide and flat, had been covering up a container, set into the ground, full of what Marcus was abruptly sure wasn't just water.

Mouse dipped her fingers in, drew the keys up from the bottom and shook them a little to help fling the drips off. "Added some security since the last time you came here," she said.

"So I see," Marcus agreed.

She tilted her head, gaze steady—stood, and tipped the rock back into place, and then threw the keys at him. He caught them, reflexive; they were still wet, cold, and the force of her toss had made the holy water that was left on them spatter across his palm and fingers.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Just him," he said. "Not me."

"Can't be too careful," Mouse said. But something in the line of her shoulders had relaxed, just a little.

She held her hand out for the keys, and he tossed them back. And then he went to go pry Tomas out of the truck.

Part of the reason they'd come here was because this place had a storm cellar—put in special, because anybody who used this place was as likely as not to need something or other locked up behind a lot of cement and rebar.

And once Tomas understood where Marcus was taking him, he looked _grateful_. Turned Marcus's stomach, that look on Tomas's face, knowing why it was there; it was for the best, that was why they'd picked this place, but that didn't mean Marcus had to like it.

A week, he reminded himself. That was all. Then it would be over.

It would go like this: Mouse still had a hell of a lot of work to do in New Orleans—less, maybe, now that Electus was gone, except then the estimate went up again without Tomas or Marcus to shoulder any of the load. She'd be back when she could; she'd never go more than twenty-four hours without checking in if she could possibly help it. She'd bring supplies, if they needed any.

The storm cellar was for Tomas. There was already a mattress down there, a heavy-gauge D-ring set into the wall over the head of it. Running water pumped from the house, a drain set into the floor. It had been used for this sort of thing before.

And Marcus was going to lock himself in there, too.

It locked from the outside. He wasn't foolish enough to bring keys out anywhere the demon could get at them, anyway. Whenever Mouse came, she could let him out if it was necessary, if something had gone wrong. If she didn't come, then they were going to have a lot more problems than just being locked in a storm cellar.

Tomas wouldn't want to be let out. He wouldn't want to be put in a position where he could hurt someone. But Marcus wasn't going to lock him up and then walk away whistling—wasn't going to give the demon nothing to do but hurt _Tomas_. Somebody had to be there with him. Somebody had to look after him.

Somebody had to be there to make sure he understood he wasn't alone.

And Marcus was up to it. Marcus was fine; the eye he'd lost, crushed by a cruelly deliberate thumb, was back in its socket, whole and round. He thought his vision out that one might actually be better than it had been before. His hand was fine. His ribs weren't broken anymore. The cuts that had been carved into his face looked ten years old. There were half a dozen whip-weals across his thighs that were still raw, where Tomas hadn't put his hands—they'd healed too, but less, that was all. One of them was open, just now scabbing over.

He was safe, and well. He was better off than he had any right to be, and the only reason was Tomas; his awareness of that truth was constant, relentless, twisting his heart to a cramp in his chest.

So he got Tomas inside. Switched the handcuffs for ropes—the demon could still break Tomas's wrists if it tried, but it would be harder, and it could rub Tomas's skin raw but it would take more time than cutting them to bleeding on the cuff edges would. Tomas cooperated silently; he had a grim, fixed, faraway look that suggested the demon was speaking to him or showing him something, doing something that it took every speck of Tomas's concentration to ignore.

He and Mouse made quick work of the rest. Mostly just moving the supplies that were already in the house down into the cellar where Marcus could get at them. Food that was easy to eat with your fingers: bread, crackers, peanut butter in plastic jars instead of glass, dried fruit, vegetable jerky. Nothing that took a fork or a knife, or even a spoon.

Mouse gave him a steady hard look, before he closed the door between them. She knew, and he knew, everything there was to say; but she said, "Be careful," anyway, quiet, and touched the back of his hand before she turned round.

And then he shut himself in with Tomas, and the demon.

The first thing he did was try a few more lines on it—sure, both Tomas and the demon had said it wouldn't work, and he'd tried already to no discernible effect. Usually they at least writhed a little, spat or screamed or tried to bite you, when you started up a litany. But then he'd been dazed, bleeding, only three-quarters conscious. Not exactly at his most focused.

And when he did, Tomas looked up at him, blinking, frowning just a little. All Tomas, Marcus was sure. He'd seen that particular little furrow across the forehead far too many times to fail to recognise it.

But then—it was viscerally horrifying, repulsive, to see the change that came over Tomas so clearly. Usually, Marcus was exorcising strangers. He cared about them all, of course, and in a way he even loved them. It was hard to go to such lengths for a person, to dig down and fight for their soul alongside them, without coming to love them a little. But he didn't _know_ them.

It was a good thing. It was what made it possible for him to stand by, clearheaded, and decide on his angle of attack, his strategy, while the husband or wife, the frightened parents, the weeping family, were stricken to immobility.

He understood them better, now. It was so fundamentally _wrong_ , to look at Tomas's face and see nothing of Tomas himself behind it, to perceive that some other power sat there and stretched Tomas's mouth into a smile, narrowed Tomas's eyes with pointed scepticism.

"Really? Again?"

Marcus sighed through his nose, and let the rest of the sentence come out anyway, for all the good it would do him: "—before whom every knee must bow."

The demon laughed, mocking. " _Must_ bow. That's a bit much, isn't it?"

Marcus didn't answer. He stood there, and closed his eyes, and swallowed hard.

He could bear this. He'd done it before. He'd failed before, lost all power to exorcise, felt a darkness creeping in on him that he'd flinched from, convinced he could no longer hold fast against it.

At least this time, he still had his faith. In God, and in himself, and in Tomas. At least this time, he knew the fault didn't lie with him. Tomas had made a deal, had given his word to the demon of his own free will. Not even the Pope, not even the angel Gabriel, could drive the demon out of him before its term was up.

But God, God, how was that supposed to make him feel any better? At least when he'd been rendered helpless by his own incompetence, his own sinful pride, there had been the hope of mercy from a higher power—

He bit at his mouth. His eyes stung. He drew a long unsteady breath. And then he heard himself say, "I pray for you, outcast."

And it wasn't—it wasn't only a litany, wasn't only words he'd been taught when he'd needed them most. It was as though he, he alone, heartfelt and wrenched open, were saying it to Tomas.

"Fallen angel, you are forgiven," because if Tomas was stupid enough to think that with this deal, he had damned himself, then he needed to know— _needed_ to know—how wrong he was. "You are forgiven," he whispered again, and there would only have been one way to finish it even if he hadn't had it long since memorised: "You are loved."

The demon clucked Tomas's tongue. "Oh, how _sweet_ ," it murmured, warm and patronising.

But surely, surely, it hadn't been the only one who'd heard. Surely Tomas had been listening, too; surely he knew, now, that there was nothing the demon could do that would make those words untrue.

The first three days passed in relative quiet, and felt all the longer for it.

It was deliberate. There was no doubt in Marcus's mind. It was working on every last one of his nerves, straining all his mind, to wait for the moment when the demon would begin to act in earnest—when it would at last understand it couldn't sway Tomas with small whispers and ordinary temptations, and change its tactics to those far more dangerous and difficult to deal with.

Tomas lay still upon the mattress, eyes closed. But Marcus knew what to look for: his fists were clenched, his knuckles tight. Sometimes his throat worked. Marcus could—could almost hear it, now and again, beyond the rush of his own pulse in his ears. A soft hissing, the sound of words spoken quietly in another room. Words Marcus himself could never quite make out. And Tomas's mouth didn't move once.

The first couple evenings, Marcus was able to at least make Tomas eat and drink. But the third evening—the third evening Tomas choked and coughed, and when he spat out the mouthful of crackers he'd eaten, it wasn't crackers anymore but cockroaches, wet with spit, carapaces cracked where Tomas's teeth had closed on them. Tomas covered his mouth, pressed himself to the wall, while Marcus swore and stamped them against the floor.

"God," he sighed when they were all dead, and he didn't even know whether he meant it as address, a plea, a simple exhortation for the Lord's attention. And then he went to Tomas, touched his head and then his shoulder. "Tomas—"

"Sorry," Tomas gasped out, the first word he'd said to Marcus while they'd been down here. He was shivering under Marcus's hands as though chilled, and never mind that warmth poured from him. "I'm sorry, Marcus, I didn't—I shouldn't have—"

"Hush," Marcus said, before he could carry on with such rank nonsense. "Hush, it's all right. Not hungry anymore, eh?" he added, gentle, deliberately wry; and Tomas snorted half a laugh through his nose and then went back to looking wretched and queasy, which Marcus took for agreement. "That's all right. It's all right. We'll try again later. Tomorrow. It's all right."

He kept on in that vein for a minute, quiet soothing words that said nothing much, all the meaning in the tone and feeling instead. He crouched down with one hand at the nape of Tomas's neck, the other moving in mindless soothing strokes back and forth along the line of Tomas's shoulder. And Tomas shuddered a little, eyes screwed shut, and then leaned into his touch—into his touch, into his arms, head tipping forward toward his shoulder, temple coming to rest against his.

"I'm not strong enough," Tomas murmured, almost into Marcus's ear. "Marcus, I'm sorry. I don't know what it's going to do. But I can't hold it anymore, I can't—"

He broke off, moved in a strange stiff way that was almost convulsive. "Tomas," Marcus said, sharper than he'd meant to, too desperate for an answer to hold back.

And, sure enough, he didn't get one. Tomas moved again in that same horrid way, as if fighting with himself, and then suddenly he'd lifted his head away from Marcus's, tipped it back, and was laughing.

God, Marcus hated the way demons laughed.

He jerked his hands away—the demon didn't stop him. "Oh, wonderful," the demon said, with a satisfied sigh, and angled Tomas's mouth at Marcus in a smug, pleased smile. "He's simply tearing himself to _pieces_ over you. Delicious. This isn't going to take long at all."

"You won't have him," Marcus ground out, and turned pointedly away.

Not that it mattered: there was nowhere to run. And that was only right, Marcus reminded himself, because Tomas had no escape from the demon; and for as long as he was trapped, Marcus would stay with him, and there was nothing the demon could do or say to him that would change that.

It wasn't until the fourth day that Marcus realised there was something else strange about it.

He'd dealt with so many possessions—but no deals, not like the one Tomas had made. Perhaps that was the difference.

The deeper demons worked their way into their victims, the more powerful they grew, and the more they were able to exercise that power in ways they couldn't otherwise. And once they had that sort of foothold, that sort of anchor, they weren't notable for their restraint. They didn't hold back. They liked to torture, to torment, and they didn't settle for the havoc they could wreak upon the bodies of the possessed; they liked to cause harm beyond the weals and sores that wore into the flesh they were rotting through with their presence alone.

After the cockroaches, after the way Tomas had gasped apologies and then given way, Marcus had been expecting the worst. He'd barely slept, mind chasing itself in circles—he couldn't help but wonder grimly what it would try first, whether it would strike him or strangle him, use Tomas's teeth to chew through whatever part of him it could reach, crack his skull open on the concrete floor.

But even on the fourth day, even when it was unmistakably the demon and not Tomas who sat bound on the mattress—watching Marcus, grinning, taunting him with his helplessness, instead of lying there in desperate silence—

That was all it did.

It spoke to him, yes. It murmured suggestions as to what it might do with Tomas; gave gloating descriptions of how tarnished and ill-used Tomas's soul already was, how little work there was left to do; explained in visceral detail what cruelties it would visit upon Tomas once he had been cast into Hell. But it didn't touch Marcus.

It didn't touch Marcus, not once.

He hadn't intended to give it any opportunity. He'd only wanted to make sure there was water within reach of Tomas, if it should be Tomas in there again soon—and somewhere in the back of his mind there was a line drawn, pure habit. He knew the moment he'd crossed it, even in error, leaning too far; he braced himself to be made to pay for the mistake one way or another.

Half a dozen times at least he'd done this, come within arm's reach, when he'd misjudged himself or was too tired to see straight. And it always ended the same way: demons could be fast, strong, could bend their victims' bodies to their will even more easily than they could exercise their own powers through them. In all his long years as an exorcist, Marcus had been grabbed more times than he could count—thrown, struck, choked half to death. He'd had his wrists broken, his shoulders dislocated, his elbows wrenched.

But this demon only twisted on the mattress, opened Tomas's mouth and hissed at him, harsh as an alley cat. Tomas's arms were still secure, the ropes holding; Marcus had checked them just this morning. But that would hardly have been enough to stop it reaching for him, grabbing at him as best it could, trying to find somewhere to sink its claws in. And yet it didn't.

He'd already thrown himself back a step, and he'd expected to be too slow. He teetered for a moment on his heels, and then moved closer again, frowning. "Tomas?" he said slowly.

But it wasn't Tomas. The demon chuckled, said something in that patronising tone it seemed to like so much, a voice like ten voices at once.

A trap, Marcus thought. A trick. It knew him; they all knew him. This one just had a little more restraint than most, and he needed to back away before it killed him and left his body at the door for Mouse to find.

"—will _have him_ ," and suddenly he was listening, he couldn't stop, because it had started shouting, vicious, spitting the words out like bullets. "And you'll stand by and watch me take him, because you _can't stop me_ —"

Christ, it was—it was going to break Tomas's arm, twisting it at that angle. Marcus thought it and he was already almost there, reaching out. He wanted to tell himself it was only good sense, that the more intact he could keep Tomas's body the better off Tomas would be. But really it was only that something deep in him rebelled at the idea of—well. Of doing exactly what the demon had just said: of standing by and watching Tomas be harmed, and failing to prevent it.

He caught Tomas's arm. The demon made a furious sound and curled up toward him, and oh, this was going to hurt; Marcus was ready for it already, teeth in his wrist or his forearm, the demon doing its best to bite to the bone.

But it didn't happen.

The demon had opened Tomas's mouth, bared his teeth. It strained, and strained. But it was as though some invisible shield were placed inexorably between it and Marcus's skin. Even like this, the next best thing to integrated, the exertion clearly pained it, and at last it fell back gasping, sweat upon Tomas's brow.

"You can't hurt me," Marcus said slowly.

"Oh, Marky-boy, I'll _kill_ you," the demon sneered—Father Sean's voice, now, infinitely strange to hear out of Tomas's mouth.

But of course the words meant nothing. Demons did so love to lie.

And this one—this one couldn't touch him. Not wouldn't, but _couldn't_. It couldn't lay a finger on him. It forced Tomas's hands to the limits of the ropes and opened them wide, curled them into the shape of Marcus's wrists; but couldn't close them, though the tendons stood out sharp on the backs of Tomas's hands with the effort of it. It snarled at him, fierce and bestial, and then spat on him.

Marcus wiped the mess away, absent. He couldn't stop staring. Not at the demon, but at Tomas's face, even if Tomas wasn't behind it just now.

Because—God. It had to be Tomas, didn't it? That was the only explanation that made any sense. Tomas had made it part of the terms of that damned deal, no doubt, that it wasn't to touch Marcus; and oh, it made Marcus _furious_ , half-mad with it, some wild reckless feeling filling up his chest, stinging in the corners of his eyes, that Tomas should have taken such care for Marcus's safety, and yet cast himself so heedlessly upon the rocks.

Marcus screwed his eyes shut, rubbed his hands across his face. "Oh, Tomas," he said into his palms, helpless, wretched. He wanted to take Tomas by the shoulders and shake him, shout at him. Tell him what a fool he was, and that he was never to do such a thing again. It was excruciating. It was _unbearable_.

Of course, that was the last thing Tomas needed from him right now. But oh, Marcus was going to have some choice goddamned words for him, when this was over—

"You'll see," the demon was hissing at him, but it sounded almost as angry as he did. And perhaps all this—the way it had come forward and spoken to him, the way it had tried to lash out—should be taken as a good sign, a sign that it had grown impatient and frustrated. That perhaps it was finding Tomas more difficult to break than it had anticipated, after all.

And then Tomas's body shivered all over, and Tomas's head fell back. His hands spasmed, his throat moved in an uncertain bob; and then, that quickly, it was Tomas who looked up again, blinking suddenly heavy eyes, looking dazed and bleary.

"Marcus?" he said, and it was in his own voice, hoarse, his own accent, as if Marcus hadn't already been a moment from weeping. "Marcus, what—what's happening?"

"Hush," Marcus said, eyes wet. "Hush, it's all right."

It took only a step to bring him to the edge of the mattress again; he sat, this time, sat and took Tomas's hands.

"My arms hurt," Tomas murmured, vague and confused.

Because of course they did; the demon hadn't managed to break either of them, but not for lack of trying, and no doubt something had been pulled, sprained.

"I know," Marcus said aloud. "Don't worry. Don't worry, I'm looking after you. You'll be fine."

Please, God, let that be the truth.

"I didn't," Tomas managed, and then stopped, throat working, biting his lip. "It didn't hurt you?"

So at least he hadn't lost all understanding of where he was and why. Marcus couldn't have blamed him if he had; he had no idea what it might be like for Tomas in there when the demon was present, no precedent that would have allowed him to understand the consequences of this damned deal. But if Tomas wasn't aware of anything the demon did or said—God, the time must pass strangely for him, the world a blur. How long ago did it seem to him that he'd last spoken to Marcus? How long ago, the ride here in the pickup truck, the church in New Orleans?

And of course the only thing he was worried about, truly worried about, was _Marcus_.

Marcus closed his eyes, leaned in and pressed his cheek to Tomas's temple. "It didn't hurt me," he agreed, throat aching.

He felt what the words did to Tomas, the way sheer relief cut Tomas's strings all at once; Tomas let out a long unsteady breath, body going slack in Marcus's arms. "Then it worked," he mumbled into Marcus's shoulder—more to himself than to Marcus, no doubt, but it was all the confirmation Marcus had needed.

"Yes," he said, sick, bitter, hoping distantly that Tomas couldn't tell. "Yes, it worked." _You damned fool_ , but he couldn't say that; that wasn't what Tomas needed from him, not right now. "I'm all right. I'm fine. Don't worry."

Pitiful. He couldn't help Tomas, couldn't exorcise him, couldn't do a damn thing for him except sit here with him and count down a week one endless day at a time—hold him like this, and tell him what he wanted to hear, and soothe him.

It didn't feel like enough. It didn't feel like it could possibly be enough. But Tomas leaned into him and breathed, and was, perhaps, for a handful of minutes, at peace.

The fifth day was bad. The sixth day was worse.

Marcus wasn't even sure exactly where the line might have lain between them. The cellar never changed, the single cheap crap bulb in the ceiling shining with the same harsh light no matter the hour. Mouse had come a few times already, knocking before she unlocked the door, waiting for Marcus to knock back before she did it—twice there had been light behind her and twice it had been dim, dark, and Marcus hadn't known which would be which until it had happened. He'd taken Tomas's watch off his wrist before tying him down, for safekeeping, but it wasn't digital: time passed twelve hours at a go, and that was all Marcus knew of it.

He'd thought himself useless before, when all he could offer Tomas were vague reassurances and cold comforts. But on the fifth day, Tomas was convulsing and sobbing by turns, nearly unresponsive. And by the sixth day, he had stopped believing Marcus was real.

It wasn't that he couldn't tell Marcus was there, couldn't see him or hear him, couldn't feel his touch. It was just that those things made his eyes spill over with tears, made him squeeze them shut and twist away. At first he was—he talked to Marcus like Marcus was the demon, like he thought it had taken Marcus's form to torment him; and oh, Marcus couldn't bear to think what it had been doing to him in his mind to give him that idea. But it became gradually clear that he also believed it was simply impossible. He didn't seem sure whether Marcus was dead or simply gone, never to return—but he was extremely sure there was no way it could be Marcus himself who stood before him, and Marcus couldn't begin to work out how to convince him otherwise.

For an hour or two, Tomas did nothing but apologise to him, over and over, going steadily hoarser as he did it, until he was almost whispering. He alternated: weeping, saying to Marcus how sorry he was about what had happened to Marcus, that he hadn't been there—and then, contradicting himself, that he had caused it, that it was his fault, that he should have done something instead of just standing there while Marcus died. And then he'd stop, gulping for air, and say that of course he knew it wasn't actually Marcus he was talking to, and he was sorry for that, too. For his weakness, for making even Marcus's undead semblance listen to this.

Marcus couldn't get near him without setting him off again, which felt, selfishly, like the worst part of all. He'd never quite realised before how much he depended on proximity, touch. It was one of the things that had only ever helped him be a better exorcist, that urge to perform the laying on of hands, and he'd never had to fight it this way. He wept almost as much, almost as shamelessly, as Tomas, and not in sympathy but from the sheer suffocating terror of it, that the only thing he had left to offer Tomas—his presence—was perhaps doing Tomas more harm than good.

At last, blessedly, at what was either well past midnight or midafternoon, Tomas was exhausted. He'd calmed a little, not because Marcus had succeeded in convincing him of anything but simply because he had become grimly resigned to his inability to make what he believed wasn't Marcus go away and leave him alone. Marcus didn't speak, didn't come near him, tried to stay out of his line of sight; and in time he grew quieter, only mumbling what he had before been crying out; and then he fell silent.

He was asleep, Marcus understood, and let his head fall back against the wall in relief.

There was still food left. Marcus wasn't hungry, but he knew he ought to eat something, and made himself do it—peanut butter, some of the dried fruit. Nothing that crunched. He wouldn't wake Tomas again for the world.

He checked Tomas's watch, and wished he knew whether the sun was up. If it was, they had a good thirty-six hours of this left, and God only knew whether Tomas would make it that long like this. But if it wasn't—

If it wasn't, then they'd nearly made it to the seventh day. Marcus had heard all the jokes, the casual lines people liked to prod at faith with, about whether it had really taken a week to make the world; he'd always smiled and given one of half a dozen standard answers that all boiled down to—the numbers were never the point, and never would be, and if that was all you were looking for in the Bible, it was all you were ever going to find. Except nicer.

But now, good God. Now he was hard-pressed to believe there was any length of time greater than a week. He closed his eyes, and dug his thumbs into the corners of them, pressing into the bridge of his nose. He'd dealt with cases that had taken much more than a week, and yet it was different this time. Not only because it was Tomas, but because it had nothing to do with him, with anything he did or didn't do. The week had been set from the start, and he could neither shorten it nor lengthen it. He could only wait for it to pass, and when that was all he had to think about, every tick of Tomas's watch might have been a year.

He rubbed his face, and made himself look up. Tomas was still quiet; that was good. Quiet and—shivering.

Marcus bit at his mouth, absent. There were a few old blankets at the foot of the mattress, thin but soft. And Tomas was asleep now. Surely it would be all right to at least come close enough to cover him up a bit. As long as Marcus was careful, he wouldn't wake.

That remained plausible up until the moment Marcus, the edges of two blankets layered together clutched in his hands, was leaning in over Tomas's curled shoulders. Tomas lay on his side; his eyes were closed; and then they weren't, and his breath caught audibly in his throat, and he turned blurred, reddened eyes up toward Marcus.

Marcus froze. He wondered distantly whether it would help at all if he threw the blankets on Tomas and ran—if that would be enough to stop Tomas from panicking again, or deciding Marcus was the demon returned to torment him some more.

But Tomas only lay there, bound, and let his eyes fall shut. "Oh, God," he said, very low. "God, I don't care anymore. I don't care if it isn't real. Please. Marcus, please."

Marcus swallowed hard, and let the blankets settle; his pulse rushed in his ears, his heart pounded, and he knew it was best not to think about why, those words said in that voice, soft and desperate—God, God, not now.

It shouldn't have been a good thing. He couldn't stand to think it was a good thing. But oh, he was relieved to be allowed to stay where he was, to sit at the edge of the mattress and run unsteady fingers through Tomas's curling hair. "What?" he said quietly. "What is it? Tell me what you want, Tomas. Anything. Anything," and he must sound like the demon in saying it, begging for a secret he could use to undo Tomas, but he'd been helpless for hours, days; whatever it was he could do for Tomas now, he _wanted_ to do it, whether Tomas believed it was him or not.

"Don't leave me," Tomas whispered. "Please, Marcus, don't leave me. God, I wish you hadn't gone. I wish you hadn't—"

He stopped, brow furrowing, eyes gone glassy.

"I wish," he said again. "I," and then he turned his face away and shook his head a little. "No, that's wrong. Isn't it? You're dead. Aren't you dead?"

Christ alive. "No," Marcus said, gentle, and smoothed a soothing hand to the nape of Tomas's neck. "No, I'm not."

Tomas laughed, weak and ragged. "Not that you'd tell me if you were, I suppose," he murmured, and then he looked up at Marcus, and his eyes were still red, wet, even as he offered Marcus a wavering smile. "I miss you."

Marcus's throat closed, tight and aching.

"I think about you all the time," Tomas added. "I remember that much. Sometimes I wake, and for a little while I've forgotten you're gone. We were together all the time, before. Day in and day out. I got used to it. I thought I'd always be able to look over and see you next to me—tell you things, or sit with you in silence. Watch you smoke. I didn't know it was going to end. I didn't know I was going to run out of chances—"

He ground to a halt; his voice had half-recovered, all that time he'd spent lying quietly, but too many words in a row and it was gravel-rough again, sanded almost to nothing. He blinked, once, again, but he didn't seem to be able to look away from Marcus.

And Marcus—Marcus, too, felt caught and held, heart squeezed tight in his chest. "Tomas," he heard himself say, barely over a whisper.

"Please," Tomas said. "Please."

Marcus told himself he didn't know what Tomas was going to do. He told himself he'd said anything, anything, and he'd meant it; he couldn't not mean it, when it was Tomas.

He let it happen. Tomas lifted his head, pressed their temples together, and for a moment that was all: Tomas's face against Marcus's, the scrape of stubble, Tomas's cheek fever-hot and dry as paper. Marcus screwed his eyes shut and drew a shaking breath, and waited blindly, heart in his throat—and then Tomas turned just enough, pressed his mouth softly to the corner of Marcus's, and Marcus could no longer pretend this was anything but what it was.

He shied, helpless, nervous, breath catching; and then his ears filled with it again as if Tomas were saying it aloud, _Marcus, please, don't leave me_ , and he made himself still, took the chance he had been given to stop this and deliberately, willfully, set it aside. Tomas had already begun to follow him, and kissed him again, and the kiss was soft, asking nothing, requiring nothing, utterly without expectation. Marcus had braced himself to withstand it, and was disarmed by the lack of anything to withstand; a helpless sound formed in the back of his throat, and he closed his hand more tightly where it was clasped at the nape of Tomas's neck, and kissed back.

He didn't know how long it went on. It was easy to lose track, like that, lying there together, and tired as they were; the kisses themselves were few, but slow and lingering, a kiss giving way to not-a-kiss, which gave way in its turn to a kiss again, so gradually and easily that it hardly seemed to matter which was which. In between, they lay quiet, pressed together from shoulder to ankle, for the sheer helpless reassurance of closeness.

It had already seemed almost like a dream, really. So Marcus didn't understand that he'd fallen asleep until he woke.

Tomas was still there. He had been awake already, Marcus realised, just lying there looking at Marcus; their eyes met, Marcus blinking sleep away, and Tomas gave him a small resigned smile. "I don't know whether it makes you seem more real or less," he said quietly, "to watch you sleep here beside me."

Marcus closed his eyes, reached up and rubbed a hand across his face. "Because the real Marcus Keane wouldn't be stupid enough to fall asleep next to a possessed man?" he murmured wryly. "You give me too much credit, Tomas, as always."

Tomas laughed, a soft half-breath through his nose. And then he rolled closer, brushed the line of his nose against Marcus's, and Marcus should have moved away but didn't, so it wasn't only Tomas to blame when Tomas kissed him again.

He should have been thinking. He should have checked Tomas's watch. Seven days, and this was the seventh: the demon's last chance, the time that remained to it to claim Tomas's soul forever ticking away second by second. He should have been ready.

But as it was, he had only an instant to be surprised by the way Tomas moved against him, over him—and then Tomas's tongue was in his mouth, with none of the uncertainty, the tender caution, Marcus might have expected: intent, lascivious, choking him. Tomas's thigh was forcing its way between Marcus's, and then his hips _moved_ like—oh, God, he should have bloody known—

He got an arm between them, forced the demon up away from him and held it off with his forearm, shuddering; his eyes were hot, the skin of his mouth tingling, and he was weighed down, trapped under Tomas's body, and the demon was laughing—he lost his head, shoved it and scrabbled away in the grip of something that was almost panic, rolled free onto the cold concrete floor and then lay there gulping air, trying not to be sick.

He wanted to wipe his mouth, wash it out with soap; he wanted to scrub his skin half off. He wanted to scrub his _soul_ off—because he'd opened the door for this, he knew he had, even if Tomas had been the one to shove them both through it. He'd never been careful enough not to look at Tomas, not to touch or want or think about Tomas. Tomas had kissed him, but Tomas had been tormented for six days, had thought he wasn't real, some abstract constructed temptation. Marcus had no such excuse, awake and aware, in his right mind, and he'd still let himself—he'd still—

"Marvelous," the demon murmured, tone warm and pleased. "Look at you. Look at you! Drowning in guilt and sin. It just took a little patience, that's all. It's always so much better when you do it to yourselves. You hardly even need any help. It's inside you already, all of you."

"Shut up," Marcus gritted out. There was no reason to think it would do any good; the demon wasn't even wrong. This had been in him already, all along, and he knew it.

It was just that it was satisfying to say it, to push back. Anger steadied him. He picked himself up off the floor, set his jaw and turned and looked at the demon.

It smiled at him with Tomas's mouth, kicked the blanket idly away and then spread Tomas's thighs apart—arched Tomas's spine, let his head tip back and his mouth fall open, and the motion continued along his body and turned into an obscenely slow roll of his hips—

"God," Marcus said, curse and plea at once, and twisted his face away, swallowing hard.

"Please, Marcus," the demon said, and it was Tomas's voice now, almost exactly as it had been before: _Marcus, please. Don't leave me._ "Please. I've missed you so much. I want you, I _need_ you," and they were terrible words to hear, a knife in the gut; words Marcus had barely managed to let himself imagine, inside his own head, and now they were being said to him by Tomas, except it wasn't Tomas at all.

"No," Marcus heard himself say, harsh, strained. "No, no—"

"Yes," the demon pressed, letting its impression of Tomas drop away again. "Oh, you have no idea, do you? You should've known. He's even worse than you are—at least you've tried. At least you've been depriving yourself the way you think you should, even if you can't stop wanting it. Him? Even when he was a priest, even when none of us had gotten anywhere near him, he was fucking that woman. He enjoys it; he justifies it to himself with words like _care_ , like _love_ , so he doesn't have to feel bad about it. So he gets to keep doing it. That's all it is."

It paused. Marcus looked up, instinctive, wary of whatever it meant to do next, and it tilted Tomas's head, looked at him searchingly and then shifted against the mattress—New Orleans was hot, Tomas had dressed down to a shirt with a clerical collar instead of a full cassock, and it was—the edge caught, rode up to his waist as the demon moved, bared a handspan of skin just above his belt, and Marcus needed somewhere else to look—

There was a helpless sound in his throat. He tried to swallow it and only half succeeded, screwed his eyes shut and turned his back on the demon. His legs felt weak; he stumbled and then went willingly to his knees, and the ache in them, the impact jarring him to his bones as he landed, felt good, appropriate. Due punishment.

"Oh, come on," the demon said, chiding. "Live a little! He wouldn't give a free show to just anyone."

"If you cared what he would and wouldn't do," Marcus bit out, "you wouldn't have—"

He cut himself off; he didn't know what to call it, how to capture the way the kiss had changed and Tomas's body had moved, what name to give to the thing that had suddenly made it all so relentlessly _wrong_.

Tomas might, in theory, have kissed Marcus that way. And yet Marcus was sure that if he had, it wouldn't have felt like that.

He couldn't define the distinction even to himself. He shook his head; and behind him, the demon sighed, and said, "There's no need to be so stubborn about this. He wouldn't even remember it, you know."

Oh, God—

"He wouldn't have to know. You could do whatever you wanted, right now. He'd never find out. I'd let you."

God, no. Marcus scraped for something to focus on, but his head was empty, his hands shaking; when words came, it was the oldest thing he'd ever memorised, before even Our Father: a child's idea of what repentance meant, charmed words that didn't have to be understood to wipe you clean of whatever it was you'd done. _Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee_ —

"But I don't think you have to worry. He'd like it. He'd like anything you did to him. He thinks about it all the time. Your face, your hands, your cock."

— _blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of_ —

"He'd be grateful. He'd be glad to know you wanted to do it. And you do want to, don't you?"

— _pray for us sinners, now and at the hour_ —

"He couldn't stop you. Everything you've dreamed of, everything you've thought about while you're—oh, not even jerking yourself off. Just lying there, pathetic, waiting for it to stop. _Wasting_ it. That's it, isn't it?"

"How," Marcus blurted, and then caught himself, bit his tongue and dug his nails into his palms. Because it didn't know, it couldn't. It had been guessing, that was all, and by reacting with surprise, dismay, he'd told it that it was right—

"You don't think he knows? He has gifts, Father Marcus. He saw you in Mexico City. He's seen other things, too. Did you think he'd told you about all of them? He knows everything. He's seen you, watched you, dozens of moments when you thought you were alone—when you _were_ alone, but that doesn't matter, because he can dream them right into his head anyway."

It couldn't be. Surely it couldn't be. Tomas would've said something, even if only to apologise for the indiscretion of it. That was how he was: apologising for things that weren't actually his fault at all, and then running off and doing things that _were_ his fault without contrition. Opening his head up to demons, making foolish bargains. Saving Marcus, without even pausing to ask whether Marcus might prefer that Tomas save himself instead.

"He knows," the demon repeated, softer now, almost reassuring. "He knows what you want from him. He's been waiting for you to do something about it. You shouldn't disappoint him."

Marcus felt his mouth twist, and, helpless, laughed. "I imagine he'll survive it," he said, as steadily as he could. And he stayed where he was, kneeling on the cold concrete, and didn't let himself turn around.

It kept on for a while like that. Telling him everything it would let him do to Tomas's body while it was in there, whatever he wanted; how good it would feel, how much he would like it. That Tomas would love it, would thank him when it was over, would beg him to do it again. Tomas's hands were still bound, which had been a necessity and was now a mercy: it couldn't use them to touch Tomas's body, to—do anything. But Marcus could hear every motion it made, every rustle of Tomas's clothing against the surface of the mattress. And it was—it made sounds in Tomas's voice, cried out ecstatically, begged him hoarsely for things he struggled not to picture.

He didn't look at it. He didn't answer it. He knelt, and he prayed. He thought about what he might need, what he might have to ask Mouse to bring him the next time she came to check in. It was the seventh day; but surely the demon wasn't going to give up Tomas unless it was made to. Surely they were going to have to exorcise it properly, once the term to which it and Tomas had agreed was over.

And then everything went very still and silent. Marcus couldn't move, couldn't breathe; the quiet was perfect, unbreakable, unnaturally so. The lone crap bulb—it wasn't buzzing. He couldn't even hear his own pulse in his ears.

The ground seemed to shift, or perhaps it held still but the place where Marcus knelt on it had somehow moved instead. There was something that wasn't a noise, and yet Marcus felt deafened, struck. _The earth moved_ , he remembered Mouse telling him, _or the sky did_ —

And then the air, the pressure it had somehow been exerting on him, eased. He gasped, lurched in place and then belatedly jerked round to look: Tomas was lying there on the mattress, body tense and straining, hands clenched into fists, and _something_ was pouring from him, black as shadow, thick as tar, hissing and clawing and scraping, screaming on its way out at a pitch just on the edge of hearing. It writhed in the air, sickly, squirming, viscerally revolting—looking at it suspended, a maggot pried from a wound, Marcus could almost understand how it, all of them, _needed_ the shell of a human body, needed something to crawl inside, a shelter that could enclose the reality of their nature.

Desperate now, furious, it twisted around and grasped after whatever was in reach, Marcus as much as Tomas. Marcus drew away, quick, reflexive; something that was and wasn't a clawed hand, an icy wind, the swaying rotten branch of a dead tree, touched him anyway.

But only for an instant. It couldn't get a grip on him, either, and within the space of a blink, it was—gone.

It couldn't be. Could it? It did make some kind of sense that there should be rules, however ineffable and metaphysical; the very nature of humanity, of free will itself, demanded it. Possession was proof enough of that. Demons couldn't just take souls. They had to _win_ them. And if they were refused, rejected, they had to abide it. That truth was the foundation upon which all Marcus's years of training had been built.

He swallowed hard, veering helplessly between relief and suspicion, there and back again. It couldn't be that easy. It couldn't be that simple—oh, simple, was that the word for it? A week locked in a storm cellar with Tomas being peeled apart a piece at a time in front of him. Had that been so easy he'd complain now?

He took a step. Tomas had collapsed where the demon had left him; where what might have been the demon might have left him. Breathing, Marcus was almost certain, but unmoving.

Marcus crossed half the room. Tomas didn't lunge up off the mattress snarling, didn't strain at the ropes and bare bloodied teeth at him.

God. Maybe—maybe—

Marcus rushed the rest of the way, stumbled down and gripped Tomas by the shoulders. "Tomas," he said, so faint and cracked it was hardly audible. He cleared his throat and tried again, firmer, louder: "Tomas—"

"Mm," Tomas said, curled in on himself, grimacing as if his head ached. "Mm—Marcus?"

Marcus felt his face, his forehead. Cool, a little clammy. Tomas leaned up into his hands and sighed, expression easing, and there was such artless relief in it—hardly diagnostic, Marcus told himself sternly, but his heart wasn't listening, light with dawning gladness, five sizes larger in his chest.

"Look at me," he made himself say, and Tomas did it, squinting dazedly up, as if he were looking into a bright light after a long time deep in darkness.

Maybe.

Marcus swallowed hard, let go of Tomas and fumbled for the holy water; he'd left the bottle here somewhere—yes, there it was, and he snatched it up and thumbed it open, upended it with breathless urgency over Tomas's head.

"What," Tomas said, flinching back, but it was only the ordinary flinch of a person who hadn't been expecting to have water poured on them. " _Marcus_ , you—" And then he stopped, and his eyes went wide. "Was that," he said, hushed, blinking drips from his eyelashes.

He didn't finish the question, but he didn't have to. Marcus grinned at him, laughed—tossed the empty bottle away to roll across the floor, and took Tomas by the face. "You did it," he said. "You _did it_. A week, Tomas. Seven days. You won."

He reached out and gripped the ropes, picked at the knots, fingers clumsy with joy; he got one of Tomas's hands free, and the first thing Tomas did with it was reach up and touch Marcus's face, so tentatively Marcus barely felt it.

"And you—"

"Oh, for God's sake," Marcus said, exasperated, jubilant. "I'm _fine_. All right?"

He shook his head, set to work on the other hand and freed that one, too; and then he was stopped, Tomas catching him with both, holding him still. Tomas was staring at him, throat working. And then he stretched out a thumb, and stroked as if helplessly just under Marcus's eyebrow. On—

On the side where Marcus's eye had been put out.

Marcus gave him a wry, steady look, and held up his hand: where the nail had been. "I'm fine," he said again, and reached down, caught the edge of his shirt and drew it up. There were scars where he'd been whipped, but it had been a week since Tomas had healed them; most of them looked years old, by now.

Tomas reached out, as if it were an unspeakable act of daring, and set his palm to Marcus's chest—a little left of centre, far enough that he could surely feel Marcus's heart.

"You did it," Marcus repeated, and caught Tomas's face in his hands again, leaned in and pressed their foreheads together. "You won," and Tomas drew a shuddering breath and wept a little, as if at last he had begun to believe it.

It was the last thing on Marcus's mind, at least for a while.

Tomas—Tomas needed to be clean, warm; needed fresh clothing, food, water. Marcus knew all of that perfectly well, and yet he could do nothing, for long minutes, but clutch Tomas against him and try to breathe through the hot grateful stinging of his eyes. He found himself murmuring prayers: nothing that had ever been set down in a book, simply the words his heart wished to speak, overflowing into his mouth, and three-quarters of them were _thank you, God, thank you_ over and over and over.

But in due time, there was a clang at the door, and all at once he remembered himself. It was Mouse, of course—she'd done the math just as he had, she'd known what time she ought to come down and check on them. She let them out, when Marcus and Tomas had both answered enough questions to make her believe it wasn't the demon speaking to her in their voices; and when the door was open, she stood there looking at them for a moment and then let her eyes fall shut, transformed by pure relief.

Tomas was weak, exhausted, scraped and scratched; but he could stand unaided. Mouse and Marcus were able to get him upstairs and into the shower without too much trouble. Marcus promised him he was allowed to use up every drop of hot water, and if he needed more, that was what the kettle was for. This extravagance earned him a wavering smile, which he accepted as the priceless gift that it was.

"He's all right?" Mouse said, when he came back out into the main room.

"Yeah. Yeah, he's all right." God, what a relief it was to say it—what a relief it was that it should be the truth.

Mouse tilted her head. "And you?"

"That's the same question twice," Marcus murmured. "As long as he's all right, so am I." Which was also the truth, as far as he was concerned, and his body failed to contradict him: he was tired, yes; he ached here and there; that was all. The demon had been bound by Tomas's terms, hadn't laid a hand on him—had waited until Tomas had laid a hand on him, when it got the chance, but the worst it had managed was—

That was when it came rushing back, all at once. In his gratitude, his sheer relief, he'd almost managed to forget about it entirely.

His skin went hot at the memory. He closed his eyes, rubbed a hand across his face, cleared his throat.

"It didn't hurt me. That was part of the terms—it couldn't."

"Good," Mouse said, almost gently.

Marcus blinked and looked up.

She didn't hug him, exactly. Just stood close, gripped his shoulder, hand firm and steady.

"Good," she said again, and smiled at him, the barest quiet slant of her mouth. And then she looked away, and added briskly, "Well, a week checking in on you two at all hours would've been quite enough even without four exorcisms in six days."

"Four—"

"Left a bit of a mess back in New Orleans, your Electus friends," she said.

Marcus grimaced.

"So I'll be asleep, if you need me, for about the next sixteen hours. Don't need me," she advised.

"We'll manage somehow," Marcus said, dry—and then drew her into an embrace himself, for a moment, before she eased away with one more warm, knowing look, and then went upstairs to one of the bedrooms.

The shower was still running. Marcus was—he should—what should he do? Food. Tomas needed food. Something quick, warm, filling.

Making toast with peanut butter kept his hands busy. But not his mind.

Would Tomas even remember kissing him? He didn't know. The demon had come forward, but only toward the end. The first time, it had been Tomas. But a Tomas who'd been utterly convinced Marcus wasn't there, that he was dead or gone or both; a Tomas who must have thought he was only imagining Marcus to comfort himself, after the demon had taunted him with Marcus's image enough times.

Perhaps Tomas would decide it hadn't happened. Perhaps he'd still assume that the Marcus who'd lain there and let himself be kissed, who'd kissed back, must have been inside his own head.

Should Marcus tell him otherwise? Would that be better or worse than letting well enough alone?

Marcus bit at his mouth, absent, and slapped what was probably too much peanut butter down on the next piece of toast. It would be selfish, wouldn't it? To come out with it as if he expected something of Tomas because of it; to say it to Tomas not to help Tomas understand where the lines had been, what had been real and what hadn't, nor to apologise as he should for allowing it to happen, but because he—he wanted—he _wanted_ —

"I never knew toast could smell so good."

Marcus turned round, breath caught in his throat. Tomas stood at the far end of the kitchen island, offering another tentative, precious smile as if he somehow expected it to be rejected.

He looked—better. Not good, except in all the ways Tomas always looked good to Marcus. But better: clean, the tension that had been in his face and body softened, the exhaustion of a week's struggle muted. He'd put on clean clothes, big soft things that didn't fit him at all, and his hair was still damp, curling against his temples.

His feet were bare. Marcus didn't know why that was the thing that should drive the air from his chest, should force him to turn away again so Tomas couldn't see whatever was on his face. But it was.

"Tomas—for God's sake, sit down," he managed.

Tomas did it. Marcus still couldn't quite look at him; but he could hear it, the slow shuffle of Tomas's bare feet against the kitchen tile, the scrape of one chair at the tiny dining table being pulled out.

"I should apologise," Tomas said after a moment, very softly.

Marcus's heart jerked in his chest. "Tomas—"

"I'm not going to," Tomas admitted. "I can't. I was able to stop them, and save you, and I'm not sorry for that." He paused. "I—I suppose I wish I hadn't been so hasty. I should've realised you'd be stuck with the mess when it was over."

He fell silent, and Marcus had to look at him then: he was rubbing a hand across his mouth, face drawn.

"Let me guess," Marcus said. "If you're sorry for anything, it's that I didn't lock you in that hole for a week and leave you there, rather than trouble myself about it."

Tomas met his eyes and laughed, a breath through his nose; but he didn't contradict the words.

The toast was done. Marcus had made eight slices—there was every chance Tomas would have one slice and sick it up again immediately, but he might as easily find himself ready to eat half the loaf, after a few bites.

Marcus brought it all over on a pair of mismatched plates, and sat down himself. And he waited until Tomas had taken a slice and bitten in, mouth full of peanut butter, before he said, "Well, I've an apology for you as well, though I expect it's not the one you'd prefer. I'm sorry I came to see you. I should've just gone—"

" _Marcus_ ," Tomas protested, through a mouthful of half-chewed bread; Marcus made a disgusted face at him, and Tomas was furious and laughing helplessly and still chewing at the same time, and must only just have managed not to choke. But then he'd swallowed, and there was no amusement left in his expression as he said, "It wouldn't have stopped me. It was the demon who gave you away. I didn't know anything, I'd never have worked it out. The demon told me where you were, what they were doing to you. It—showed me."

Christ. "It was a trap," Marcus said numbly. And he'd thought he was closing it on himself, walking into it the way he had; but he'd only been the bait, at least as far as Tomas's demon had been concerned.

"It doesn't matter what it was," Tomas said, firm, steady. "As if I'd have left you there, if only I'd known? Marcus—it doesn't matter. It didn't get what it wanted. They didn't, none of them."

Which was true, though thanks more to the safehouse and to Mouse's work cleaning up after, Marcus thought wryly, than to either of them.

"Thank God," he said aloud, and he meant it.

Tomas inclined his head, silent agreement. And then he reached out cautiously, and touched the back of Marcus's hand.

Marcus saw it coming. He braced himself for it. But after a week agonising over Tomas's every breath and movement, after the knot he'd started tying himself into before Tomas had come in, and with the memory of Tomas's mouth against his still far too present in his head—bracing himself wasn't enough. The brush of Tomas's fingertips against the back of his hand went through him like lightning; he sucked in a breath without meaning to, throat working, hand flattening itself helplessly against the tabletop.

Tomas went still.

"I think," he said unevenly, "there is another apology I owe you."

Marcus swallowed, and shut his eyes.

"I know you too well to try to ask forgiveness for things the demon did—for whatever it might have said to you, whatever it might have used my body for. I don't—I can't remember. I wasn't there. And I know you'd never hold such things against me, even though I'm the one who gave it the opportunity, who invited it in."

"Tomas," Marcus said, hoarse, because he couldn't go without protesting even that much.

"But I—" Tomas paused. "There are other things I do remember. I remember the demon speaking to me with your voice, looking at me with your eyes. I remember being _certain_ you were gone and would never come back, _certain_ you were dead and I had watched it happen. I knew that if you were in front of me, and you weren't the demon, then you weren't real. You couldn't be."

He stopped again. Marcus bit down on the inside of his cheek, made himself open his eyes and look, because it was cowardly of him to leave Tomas alone right now—a week of torment and he'd been so determined not to, and now that it was over he'd abandon Tomas, for the sake of his own comfort?

Tomas looked back at him, mouth twisting, and said, "But I was wrong, wasn't I?"

Marcus didn't answer. He didn't have to.

"Oh, God—"

"Tomas, don't," Marcus said, but he knew already Tomas wouldn't listen.

"—and it knew," Tomas was saying raggedly, half over him, words overlapping. "It knew, it must have known. Did it—what did it—"

"Nothing," Marcus said instantly, and this time he reached out, caught Tomas's hands where Tomas had scrupulously withdrawn them and closed his own round them. "It didn't hurt me, Tomas."

Tomas's throat worked. "But it did something," he whispered, eyes wet.

And that quickly, it was as if it were all happening over again. Tomas's tongue, Tomas's body; the way the demon had cried out in Tomas's voice, the flash of Tomas's bare waist where his shirt had ridden up—and the worst part was, even knowing it was the demon in there, Marcus _had_ wanted to touch that skin, to fit his palm to that place, to skim his hand up further—

He shuddered, bodily, and he didn't even know whether it was in desire or revulsion, some unholy admixture of the two.

And Tomas felt it, couldn't not, and made a scraped sound in the back of his throat. "Oh, God," he said again. "Marcus—"

"No, wait," Marcus said, before he could go too far spinning out all the worst possibilities for himself. "Wait, Tomas, listen. Just listen, please. You know—you know it's different for me than it is for you."

Tomas flinched, tried to pull his hands away; but Marcus clung to them and didn't let go.

"I don't mean that as condemnation, Tomas. Anything but. You—" Marcus stopped, swallowing, and a wry huff of breath escaped before he could prevent it. "You had the trick of it, in ways I couldn't understand. Of believing in yourself, in your own heart. With Jessica, you were—you were so _sure_ it was true, and real. You were so sure it hadn't stained you."

Tomas laughed, a sharp wet bark of it, bitter. "Yes, and look how righteous my judgement—"

"Hush," Marcus insisted, with the sternest look he could muster. "I only want to explain that it was—well. Foolishness, I thought then, but at the same time some part of me envied you."

And that, at last, brought Tomas up short. He blinked; his eyes were still red, a few tears spilt, but he was staring at Marcus in bewilderment, no longer mired in self-castigation. "You," he repeated, and blinked some more. "You—what?"

"I envied you," Marcus said again. "I'd known for a long time that I was—that women weren't the only kind of temptation I'd a need to avoid. Not to touch, all right, I could manage that well enough. But not to think of it? That was going to take a great deal more diligence." He smiled, just a little, though it wasn't funny at all. "And oh, Tomas, I was diligent. I scoured myself for the least flicker of lust, natural or unnatural, and snuffed it out wherever I could. Punished myself for it when I couldn't. I was so careful, so righteous. I was bloody terrified.

"And I've never stopped. Not really, not on the inside. I've never stopped thinking of myself as one teetering step from the cliff's edge, as if I might tumble the whole way to Hell in a moment if I wavered.

"You think you made it easy for demons to get in, opening yourself up to lust on the way to love? Perhaps you did. But so did I, balancing myself on that knife's-edge of self-righteousness, deciding even an instant's weakness meant my soul was lost for eternity. I was doing half the work for them, damning myself for being human."

He ground to a halt; he was breathing hard, fast, and his heart was pounding. Tomas was staring at him, eyes wide and dark, and his hands had turned in Marcus's, fingers closing around Marcus's wrists.

"Love," Marcus added after a moment, "was only real if it was pure. If you didn't— _want_. If you didn't do anything. If you did, then love was just your excuse, your way of pretending you hadn't done anything wrong. That was what I thought. But you, and that thing—"

He broke off, briefly wordless, shaking his head, and tightened his hands on Tomas's. He hadn't been able to articulate any of this in the moment, hadn't been able to define it even to himself. But there were many things he wouldn't do for his own sake that he would try anyway for Tomas, and apparently this was one of them.

"It was night and day, Tomas. I felt it. I _felt_ it. It kissed me, it touched me; it was your mouth, your body; but there was no sweetness in it, no _warmth_ , because all it wanted was to drag me down into the dark. There was—" and God, it still felt strange to say the words, false and pitiful, next to the reality of it in that moment, the sensation, his utter certainty. But there were no better ones: these were all he had. "—there was no love in it."

Tomas was flushing now, steady, up the column of his throat and into his face. "Marcus," he said uncertainly.

"I understand now," Marcus whispered. "I do. Tomas—"

He didn't know what else to say, how else to say it. He bit his lip, leaned shakily closer and lifted one hand away from Tomas's, and—touched.

He touched Tomas's chest, first. Tomas drew a sharp breath and didn't move away, and Marcus felt dizzied by it, emboldened. He slid his fingertips up, up, to the base of Tomas's throat, to skin, and that was even better; Tomas's eyes fell halfway shut and he shivered, a stuttered ripple all the way through him. Marcus touched his jaw next, stubbled, stippled with the beginnings of a beard—it already had been, and that was before he'd gone a week unshaven.

It felt like it took every muscle in Marcus's body, all his determination screwed desperately to the sticking point, for his fingertips to graze the shape of Tomas's mouth. A week's neglect: Tomas's lips were chapped, split. It didn't matter. His hand was shaking, it was—he felt scorched by it, skin hot, gut leaping.

He waited for the moment he would hate it, hate himself for it. He waited for the moment the clinging terror would creep back, the dread, the cold grim certainty that he was defiled. He'd meant what he'd said, every word of it. He would try to fight it off. But surely it was coming. Surely he couldn't be free already.

Tomas's mouth parted beneath his touch. Marcus sucked in a breath and met Tomas's eyes, and only in doing it realised that he'd been staring at Tomas's lips before, at his own fingers against them.

"Marcus," Tomas said again, softer, shakier.

Marcus kissed him.

The first rush of motion carried him to Tomas's mouth and then left him there, stranded; he froze, as if hesitating _now_ to think things over could possibly save him.

Tomas didn't move either, except to let out the faintest breath against Marcus's lips. But that was enough. Something about the reminder that Tomas was here, warm and clean and whole, and letting him do this—it thawed whatever in Marcus had seized up. It melted him, weakened him. He leaned into Tomas further, and the press of their mouths began to change, to come alive.

And Marcus had been right after all. He screwed his eyes shut tight, kissed Tomas harder; parted his lips, tentative. There was no terror, no urge to flinch. It was still Tomas: full of heat and tenderness, nothing like the soulless grim greed with which the demon had kissed him.

Tomas made a sound against Marcus's mouth, reached up suddenly with both hands and took Marcus's face in them, and kissed Marcus _back_ with abrupt fierceness—and still, still, there was nothing in it Marcus's heart felt the need to quail from.

It felt as though a weight lifted itself from his shoulders; as though Tomas had taken it from him, just that easily. His eyes pricked at the corners. He felt undone, remade. He never wanted to stop.

But then Tomas eased away. Only far enough to gaze at Marcus with huge eyes, to bite his wet and reddened lip. "Marcus," he said unsteadily. "Marcus, are you sure—"

" _Yes_ ," Marcus said, and Tomas's eyes fell shut in relief; he still had Marcus's face in his hands, and he tipped it forward and met it, pressed their temples together.

"Thank you," he whispered, against the corner of Marcus's mouth, "for coming back to me."

Marcus closed his eyes, felt them spill over and didn't try to stop it. "Stole my line, you bastard," he murmured, voice cracking helplessly; and Tomas laughed, raw and full of feeling, turned his face into Marcus's and kissed Marcus again.


End file.
